


a few matters

by armideatys



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch, Canon Compliant, F/F, Moicy, Partners to Lovers to Enemies, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Scientists Doing Science, Slow Burn, new description because the last one made little sense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armideatys/pseuds/armideatys
Summary: the disgraced, wayward moira o'deorain ends up dr. angela ziegler's newest puzzle of interest. maybe it's her determined humanism speaking, but angela believes that she can do right by her, and all the rest.
Relationships: Moira O'Deorain & Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Moira O'Deorain/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler
Comments: 15
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

It was an incredibly hectic afternoon. A day normally reserved to her lab research was, instead, an emergency call for Dr. Angela Ziegler to the Overwatch medbay. One soldier who had appeared to be strongly stabilizing just 24 hours earlier was rapidly deteriorating by the minute. She had rushed down the three floors of stairs, not trusting the crush of the Friday afternoon employees disembarking from the elevators. By the time she burst into room 233, the doctor on duty had administered an adrenaline shot and immediate intubation. Dr. Ziegler hurriedly engaged an emergency shutdown of the nanobiotics support system.

“Angela, things like this happen,” her colleague ventured. Angela watched the monitor, knowing that the intervention had worked but unwilling to look the other doctor in the eye. “His chances are good without…well. Sometimes we pivot, no therapeutic is perfect.”

“No,” Angela locked the biotics fluids tank, squinting at what little golden elixir had returned into the vessel. She lifted it out of its dock, staggering slightly at its weight.

“But it’s never failed like this.”

* * *

Angela thought this was the extent of the medical emergencies for the day when, as she walked down the quiet hospital corridor, a code blue crackled across the loudspeaker. _Room 12B. Scheisse._

12B, a young scout in incredibly bad shape. Angela had administered the same course of biotics as she had to the footsoldier, and the scout was similarly entering respiratory depression. This time, she was the one that pushed ahead of the swarming nurses, carrying out the same series of interventions as just five minutes prior. The man’s vitals were still critical, but at least was not worsening.

“Help me prone him.” Angela snapped after a moment’s thought. A couple nurses assisted her in flipping the patient, carefully tucking two pillows under his upper chest and untangling the various tubes to rest his arms next to his head. Angela glanced at the vitals. Better.

She remembered the biotics still coursing through his body and leapt to perform evacuation. More fluid returned to this tank, along with what had still been waiting to be introduced to the bloodstream. Relief initially passed over her as she witnessed his condition improve, but this was quickly followed by the heart-wrenching distress that came with believing that one’s treatment had harmed a patient.

Two doctors now stood in the doorway, watching her quietly as she hauled the second tank out of the machine and tucked both cylinders under her arms.

“Angela, I can help you carry—”

“No, no. I can handle it.” Angela waved her colleagues off, glancing at the patient one last time before turning to nod at them. They appeared just as concerned for the doctor as for her patient.

“Let me know if anything else requires my attention.”

She walked briskly to the elevator, stepping in an empty car (much to her relief) and pressing floor 4.

Much to her annoyance, it appeared the elevator intended to make a stop at B1 first.

Her arms began to ache profusely when the elevator doors finally slid open at the first level basement. She shifted the weight awkwardly, above all trying to avoid dropping the glass vessels on the marble-patterned floor.

Angela heard the clack of footsteps as someone stepped into the elevator next to her, and finally looked up from her two charges.

“Dr. Ziegler.”

Angela stiffened, eyes narrowing as she realized her company. The woman towered over Angela, who didn’t consider herself particularly short. A shock of short red hair was pushed back from her pale, angular face, a pleased smirk spread across thin lips. Angela couldn’t help but linger on her striking heterochromia, both her red and blue irises vibrant and sparkling mischievously.

“Dr. Moira O’Deorain,” she added, extending a slender hand before realizing the other woman had both full of nanobiotics. “Would you like assistance with those?”

Dr. Ziegler tightened her jaw, her mood already sour. A wash of embarrassment and pride flushed her cheeks, and she knew she didn’t imagine the twitch of amusement in the perceptive scientist’s countenance. Her left arm seemed to have different plans, however, as the ache quickly progressed into a sharp cramp.

Angela gasped, partly in pain and partly in fear as the heavier tank from 12B began to slip from her grasp. Before it could crash to the floor, Moira darted forward to catch it, deftly cradling it in her arms. She straightened up, holding the tank with two hands and raising it over her head to peer at it under the light of the elevator.

“Careful—” Angela blurted irritably. Moira glanced over at her with a flash of affront, and she lowered the tank back into the crook of her arm.

“Sorry…thank you.” Dr. Ziegler muttered.

“You’re welcome.”

A tense pause. Angela began to regret her harshness to a stranger…though she already felt uncomfortably familiar with the scientist’s controversial work. She glanced over at her companion, noting the sleek cut of her dress pants and dark turtleneck, her short-heeled boots adding an extra inch to her intimidating frame. Angela felt tiny in her large white lab coat next to her.

“I’m sorry. I started off on the wrong foot, it’s been quite a day…and week…” Angela realized she was blabbering, taking a deep breath. “I’m Angela Ziegler.” She hefted the tank into her right arm, awkwardly extending her still-aching left hand. Moira grinned, extending her own left hand.

“You’re left-handed?” she asked. Angela couldn’t help a small smile.

“For now, I suppose.”

“I’m ambidextrous, myself.” Moira informed her, without being asked.

The elevator dinged and slid open on floor four. Angela glanced with anxious uncertainty at the other scientist, who only extended a cordial arm to the door. Angela stepped out first, unable to do anything about Moira following her into the lab. The Swiss doctor pressed her key card to the scanner and pushed the heavy door open, holding it for her unwanted guest to follow.

Angela watched tersely as her red and blue eyes immediately began traversing every surface of the space with intense curiosity. A couple of researchers and assistants looked up from their work, some of them inevitably recognizing the newcomer. Angela met their gazes with a tight smile and a nod.

“My bench is over here…” Angela speed-walked down the hall, turning in the last bay of the lab and hastily shoving aside a mess of papers and files still spread across the counter. She wasn’t fast enough for O’Deorain’s large, leisurely stride, however, and Angela felt another flush of infuriating embarrassment as she knew Moira took in the supremely messy bench.

“Um, right here is good.”

Moira set down the tank next to Angela’s. She stepped back, still looking across the various implements and substances whirring and incubating and lined up across shelves.

“What a research space!” she said appreciatively. She looked over at her host’s face, reading the mortification that Angela could’ve sworn she was concealing. “Don’t worry, my bench is just as disorganized.”

Angela cleared her throat. “Right. Well. I need to isolate and refrigerate these before they go off, so…”

Moira stepped back, finding a nearby stool to perch herself upon. Angela reached up into her shelves, donning gloves and grabbing a few sterile flasks in their plastic wraps. She gathered a serological pipette and was about to unlock the tanks when she realized Moira was still in the room, peering curiously over her shoulder.

“Oh, don’t mind me.” She smiled widely. Angela couldn’t muster the nerve to order her out of the room. She returned to the task at hand, realizing she was a bit nervous now that another illustrious scientist was observing, and likely judging, her work.

Angela had the contents of the first tank already in the pipette when she realized she had, in her anxious haste, forgotten to fill the fresh flasks with suspension liquid.

“Fuck, um,” Angela was weighing her options when Moira had already hopped onto her feet and drawn near her at the bench.

“What do you need?” she prompted her calmly. Angela hesitated but once again, she was in an inescapable pickle.

“The bottle of NBS 1.2M up there, the second shelf,” she instructed curtly. “I need 150 mL in both of these fresh flasks. Do you know how to…?”

Moira was already on it, unscrewing the lid to the solvent and fitting a tip onto her second pipette. “Yes, Dr. Ziegler, I also work in the biological sciences, remember?” She leaned forward to reach the empty flasks Angela had prepared, her body momentarily brushing up against the shorter woman in a moment of physical contact that briefly short circuited her thoughts. Angela inhaled her perfume—musky, green, and not even a hint of floral notes. _Really, Ziegler?_

“Here you are.”

Angela blinked, nodding silently as she transferred the golden nanobiotics into the new vessels. She swirled both samples, and the golden color began to dissipate as she’d hoped.

“These go into the fridge,” Angela mumbled to nobody in particular. She carried them to the walk in, tucking them into a shelf among similar glass flasks of transparent liquid. Moira had followed her dutifully once again, and she had now weaseled her way into the tiny fridge space next to her, peering with great interest at the shimmering bottles of fresh nanobiotic fluid on the higher shelves.

Angela could feel the tip of her nose going numb from the cold, but she only shoved her hands into her lab coat pockets, waiting for Moira to…what? Say something? She seemed entirely absorbed by reading the various labels on the flasks and bottles, one hand running along the shelf and the other absently waggling her long fingers. Angela could feel the heat of the other woman’s body emanating in the small space, almost pressed chest-to-chest inside the walk in.

“Interesting,” Moira finally declared softly, meeting Angela’s stare. She placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Are we going to get out of this refrigerator?”

“Yes,” Angela choked out. She spun around, shoving the insulated door open and walking as fast and inconspicuously as she could away from the room and O’Deorain.

“Well, I know you heal with nanobiotics, but what do you _really_ do here?” Moira inquired as they returned to Angela’s workspace. They leaned on opposite sides of the bay.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“You can give me the details. I have a PhD in a fairly relevant field to yours.”

“Well…I’m harnessing the potential influence directed radiation could have on cell rearrangement. That, combined with experimentation on various cell growth and regulation signals, is showing a lot of promise in at least recovering most of what is normally irreparable tissue damage.”

When Angela got going on her science, there was little else that distracted her. She pressed on with increasing confidence, Moira listening receptively to her earnest spiel.

“But such efforts, you could so easily cause out of control cell growth—”

“That’s where the engineered radiology comes in…the greatest success has been in our ability to more or less maintain safe levels of therapeutic effect...”

Moira listened until Angela managed to run out of words. She smiled a genuine smile, and Angela felt the warmth of gratification. _God, was it nice to talk to someone at this capacity…_

“I am very interested in your work with…engineered radiology, you called it? I know you’re working on the nano-scale. But in my micro and molecular biology projects, I feel it could really add an additional level of…eloquence…to the treatment processes.”

Angela began to feel her initial distrust creep back in.

“I don’t…”

“I know you are very protective of your work, Angela.” She frowned at Moira’s audacity in addressing her so. “But I promise I will include you in authorship and any other share of the project—”

“Having my name next to yours, _Dr. O’Deorain_ , is not in my principal interest.”

Angela turned before Moira could respond, her face hot with anger and disappointment as she returned her tools back to their places and began a futile effort in organizing papers.

“Very well, Dr. Ziegler.”

She couldn’t decipher if the geneticist was angry or upset by her voice. She heard her boots clack past her toward the hallway, but before turning the corner, Moira stopped and laid a strong hand across Angela’s. She froze her fumbling.

“If you change your mind, my laboratory is on floor B2. Feel free to pop in.”

Angela was too dazed to respond until Moira was already halfway down the hall, the hand that had squeezed hers carding through her messy red hair and pulling the lab door open.

Despite willing herself to deny such a ridiculous proposition, Angela could already feel the pull of the unanswered question, a waiting discovery.

This was the _only_ reason Dr. Ziegler was reluctantly considering the offer, of course.


	2. Chapter 2

O’Deorain’s offer lingered in Angela’s mind for the rest of the day. She didn’t know why something so out of the question nagged at her so as she toiled away on the two biotics samples. This was particularly frustrating, as this was a mystery that actually required her full mental faculties. Instead, a disgraced geneticist and her damned project kept her distractedly speculative.

She took down figures from basic tests, spectrometry, even running PCR to see if she could pick up any anomalies from whatever returned from the patients’ bloodstreams. It was past 10 when she finally locked up the lab and headed home, resigned to poring over the numbers tomorrow when she would hopefully be less frazzled.

Her weekend was thus spent either hunched over her laptop or slipping into her empty lab in an otherwise silent Overwatch research facility. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Angela hadn’t gotten good sleep in 48 hours. An unsolved problem always kept her brain going if she wasn’t mindful about it. This weekend was no exception.

Angela groaned, dropping her forehead on her forearms folded against the bench counter. She couldn’t figure out what differed from this batch of nanobiotics from the previous successes. She considered trashing the lot, fantasizing about smashing all those useless flasks lined up in the walk-in.

Angela’s mood was ferocious, and she knew it. She took a deep breath. _Lunch…and a coffee_. She was usually hesitant to stoop to caffeine, but keeping it on hand for such emergencies was a handy rare trick, she had discovered.

The cafeteria was closed, of course. Angela registered groggily that it was, in fact, Sunday. That’s fine…she didn’t particularly enjoy the food on regular days.

She looked around the absolutely empty space, spotting the coffee vending machine in the corner. _That will have to do._

She jammed whatever button that wasn’t a black coffee and plopped down on a nearby bench, watching the paper cup drop into the receptacle, followed by a deep brown stream of coffee and an at least equivalent portion of hot milk.

“Dr. Ziegler.”

Angela yelped in surprise, shaken from her daze.

“O’Deorain—” she leapt to her feet, hands brushing off her lumpy sweater nervously. “Dr. O’Deorain,” she corrected quickly. She blinked dumbly until the other woman nodded at the paper cup waiting dutifully in the coffee machine.

“Your coffee.”

“Oh.”

Angela reached for the cup before promptly recoiling, the cheap paper doing a very poor job at insulation. Moira handed her a cardboard sleeve, which she took with a mumbled thanks.

“What are you doing here?” Angela finally managed after a scalding sip.

“Likely for the same thing as you are,” she remarked dryly. “When science calls…you live in the lab. Or do you mean at this moment, in this empty cafeteria?” She glanced casually down at a watch on her slender wrist. It looked expensive. Everything about her looked expensive…Angela took in her attire; a well-fitted button up and a dark thin tie. She had a dark wool coat slung over her shoulder. The sharp lines of her tailored clothes somehow made her look even more severe, more angular, than she already was.

“I was about to venture out for a dinner. Takeout, most likely.” Her casual gaze roved back over onto Angela. “Would you like to join me? Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Angela glanced up at the clock on the wall. _Was it already almost 7 PM?_ “I haven’t eaten a proper lunch yet,” she admitted sheepishly.

Moira _tsk_ ed, already starting to walk toward the cafeteria’s doors. “You of all people should know better, _doctor_.” Angela wasn’t sure if her tone was mocking or good natured. But she hurried to catch up, anyway.

* * *

“Have you thought again about my offer?”

Moira collected the takeout boxes from the counter, stacking them on top of each other precariously. Angela reached to take her own container, to which the other woman only waved off and gestured to the door. She held it open for Moira, and the two set off back for the facility.

Angela’s anxious dither from the past couple of days returned. Despite a good part of her mind shouting at her to decline…get out when she could…something compelled her to do the opposite.

“I’d like to visit your lab, certainly.”

Moira was silent, likely taken aback. Angela couldn’t bring herself to look her in the eye.

“Wonderful.”

“Well, you’re holding my food hostage, anyways,” Angela quipped weakly. Moira only smirked.

They hurried down the snow-shoveled pavement, the cold wind blustering like a London street wind-tunnel. Angela hurried to keep up as her long-legged companion sped her pace. Few people were out on a Sunday evening like this, enduring a chill that cut even to Angela’s Swiss bones.

They both let out small sighs of relief at the gust of warm air of the research facility. Angela called the lift. She snuck another glance at Moira (why did it always feel secretive?), who was lowering the collar of her coat and loosening her tie. The warmth of exertion under the coat flushed her pale skin beneath, and Angela found herself noting the rise and fall of her breath under blushed collarbones as Moira unbuttoned her shirt just an inch lower. Angela immediately averted her eyes upon realization of what she hoped wasn’t a conspicuous leer. The elevator dinged, and the two boarded silently.

The elevator descended from the first floor. Moira hummed some obscure tune to herself, glancing up at the floor indicator blink down. B1 was a regular distance from the surface, but B2 took nearly twice as long to reach. The doors rattled open, rougher than the floors aboveground.

Angela took in the dim blankness of the short hallway. There were only a couple doors set in the clinically white walls. The harsh fluorescent bulbs, likely not much different from those from her own floor, seemed particularly grating without real sunlight to temper its glare.

Moira pressed her keycard against the reader and shoved the heavy door open.

“After you.”

Angela stepped into the pitch black, not quite sure what she was getting herself into. The lights flicked on, blinking the space into existence.

It was a well-equipped lab, certainly. The actual floor space was likely only half of the fourth-floor laboratory; as a result, equipment crowded together on countertops alongside buffers and solutions and unlabeled brown cardboard boxes of god-knew-what. The geneticist hadn’t been lying about her mess, either, though upon closer inspection it seemed to be a deliberate one—objects clearly placed with intention and organization that defied what would be standard procedure.

The floor plan seemed just as haphazard—one of the research bays formed by rows of counters seemed barely wide enough for even Angela to squeeze through; the third was maybe twice as wide as they would be in a standard floor plan. As she followed Moira to the back of the room, Angela realized that these weren’t normal countertops installed into the floor; they were moveable tables—sturdy and well-constructed, but definitely not standard issue. The floor was—strangely—inky black stone. There were no linoleum surfaces here. This room clearly hadn’t originated as a lab space. What, exactly, Angela had no guess.

The space seemed almost dungeon-like, Angela mused. Appropriate for a scientist so disgraced as she. She had almost imagined some type of witch’s cavern crossed with a mad scientist’s lair, with bubbling liquids and smoke and dangerous looking implements. She wasn’t sure what illicit human-experimentation implements would look like, exactly, but she admitted her foolishness upon observing the reality of O’Deorain’s benign, if not unwelcomingly dim, biotechnology laboratory.

She took a deep breath. She reminded herself that she was, in fact, fraternizing with one of the most unethical scientists in her field. _This visit is simply out of neutral curiosity, nothing more._

Moira shoved a couple boxes aside, pulled a lab stool over for her guest, and plopped down in her own office chair. She didn’t have a separated office space; her desk was jammed in the corner of the widest passageway. She popped her Styrofoam container open, split her chopsticks, and took a bite of rice. Angela took her place next to her, setting her food on a likely not food-safe counter.

“Do you work alone?” Angela tried at conversation. Moira shot her a disbelieving glance.

“Of course. No one wants to touch me with a ten-foot pole,” she scoffed. “But it’s better this way. Never was fond of students meddling in my projects.”

Angela had no answer for this. She jammed orange chicken in her mouth, eyes roving around much in the same way Moira’s had. Solvents and solutions lined shelves, completely unalphabetized but neatly labeled (some of which seemed to be indecipherable acronyms or words she had never heard of before).

“Are you going to ask _what_ I do here?” Moira blurted. She looked away at Angela’s mildly surprised gaze, suddenly quite embarrassed.

“Yes, O’Deorain, I’ll bite,” Angela said amusedly. The geneticist’s cheeks pinked slightly, all the more obvious on her translucently pale skin. “What project are you conducting?”

Moira collected her thoughts quickly. “Blackwatch requires dynamic medical support for their stealth missions, which regular medic staff can’t provide. I’ve been tapped to develop my cellular regeneration research into a workable toolset for them.”

Angela raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to hear, but a humble biomedical healing initiative was not one of them.

“Did Morrison recruit you?”

Moira laughed shortly.

“No. Reyes fought him on my appointment endlessly.”

Angela nodded, still wondering silently. Moira looked up at her, reading her expression with a success rate that the doctor was growing to resent.

“If you’re wondering why they didn’t tap you, it’s because they thought you had too much on your plate. And the risk of involving Overwatch’s foremost medical genius in a Blackwatch scandal was too great.”

Angela didn’t quite buy it. But she didn’t prod the matter further—maybe a part of her just wanted to take her word at face value.

“Why would a scientist like you be okay settling for such a position?”

Moira looked mildly affronted.

“There are very few places willing to take me on with a fully funded laboratory. This is just one natural extension of the work I’ve been focused on for years. A decade, even.” Angela became acutely aware of her piercing, mismatched gaze raking her up and down. “Longer than since you started studying your field, I’d imagine.”

The younger woman straightened in her seat.

“I obtained my MD-PhD at age twenty-three,” she replied irritably.

“And how old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

An infuriating smile played across O’Deorain’s face. “Hm.”

There was a stretch of silence. The taste of cheap Chinese food reignited a vigorous hunger, and Angela scarfed down her dinner as discreetly as possible. Moira let her eat, barely touching her own Styrofoam plate. She spoke up as Angela began to slow down.

“I’m asking for your advice on delivery systems,” Moira said flatly. “I don’t know of any other tech that approaches the capabilities of your nanite methods.” She paused. “This biomedical application of my work could be hugely impactful.”

Angela nodded. “I see.” For once, it was her trying to gauge the other’s intentions behind her countenance. Unfortunately, Moira O’Deorain seemed to be quite adept at controlling such expressions. She had the type of gaze that was difficult to return. Angela glanced between red and blue, only met by relatively earnest, if not measured, interest.

Angela would later look upon this moment as another instance when something unconsciously compelled her to believe O’Deorain.

“I’ll send you a collection of my research and method notes this week when I get the chance.” Angela shut her empty Styrofoam clamshell. Now that her hunger was sated, the warm sleepiness of attenuated fatigue already began to settle in. She rubbed at her eyes. “If I haven’t sent it your way by Thursday, email me a reminder.”

“I appreciate it.”

Angela looked around the room for a clock in vain. Moira glanced at her wristwatch again.

“It’s 8:15,” she mentioned helpfully.

“I should image my gels and head home,” she said, stifling a yawn. Moira stood up before Angela did, hands tucked behind her back. Angela resented having to crane her neck so high to look at her, walking to the end of the bay before turning around to regard O’Deorain for the last time. She lingered awkwardly, wondering what kind of goodbye was appropriate for the occasion.

“Good night, Dr. Ziegler,” Moira nodded briefly. Angela returned the nod solemnly.

“Good night.”

Angela strode to the door, realizing exactly what she had gotten herself into as she looked around the O’Deorain lab again. _Ziegler…what have you done now?_


	3. Chapter 3

Angela hated to be the flaky type, but she held off until Thursday, hoping that maybe Moira had forgotten about her promise.

Of course, on Thursday morning, 6:30 AM, the geneticist sent her a promptly worded email requesting what Angela had assured her.

She collected the material once she got to her office. Her abstract and published paper on preliminary data, her meticulously organized and labeled spreadsheets, photographs and diagrams exchanged with engineers from Overwatch and the University of Zurich. She looked at the shelf of lab notebooks above her desk, their spines cracked, contents bloated with extraneous sticky notes and taped-in lab gloves scribbled over with hasty notes. Did she trust O’Deorain with her original notes?

She decided against it.

She emailed the files back to Moira. She received a curt response within the minute.

“Received. Thank you.

Moira O’Deorain”

Twenty minutes later, having somehow read all the material, Moira emailed a number of questions. What exactly were the protocols in trials 2 and the control? Why did you measure 3 and 4 as separate groups? Could you perhaps give more detail on the mechanisms of the radiological driver, specifically how the magnetic coils generate such low frequencies? Did she have any related sources or literature on this facet of the system?

Angela attempted to answer each one as concisely and quickly as possible, knowing that she probably had ten waiting nanite batches slowly deteriorating in the walk-in. Chalk it up to her compulsion to please, she supposed.

But not much appreciation came her way, anyways. Moira answered her responses with just more inquiries, one or two questions in a trickle of emails often more than once a day, over a week or so. Angela found it a bit of a nuisance at first, but as the questions grew more rigorous she realized she had fewer definitive answers to them. They almost ended up as (frustrating) thought exercises; a re-peer review on what basic science she had started to take for granted. All the while, she was attempting to troubleshoot the problematic nanites from the previous week.

The next Friday evening, the second week after their initial meeting, Moira reappeared in the Ziegler lab. A rapid door knock unlike anyone’s Angela recognized was answered by a lab assistant, and O’Deorain burst into the room, striding quickly past the slightly dumbfounded young intern. Angela glanced up to see her approaching and grimaced, eyes darting around the mostly empty lab, luckily. There were only a couple interns shuffling around, putting things away in freezers and incubators for the weekend.

“Don’t look too pleased to see me.” Moira quipped crabbily. Angela realized the transparency of her reaction. She ejected her pipette tip and hung it carefully on its stand. O’Deorain looked at the this-time meticulously tidy bench with an air of detached amusement.

Angela cleared her throat. Her guest’s attention snapped back to her.

“This is sloppy.” Moira declared, tossing a manila folder, presumably full of Angela’s research, onto the counter. “I could barely comprehend what your intentions were with large sections of your project.”

Angela’s eyes narrowed. “This work has been peer reviewed and published in Cell,” she replied coldly.

O’Deorain pulled up a stool to sit down, unperturbed. “Well, it’s sloppy to my standards.”

A wave of frustration washed over the doctor, who was generally good at remaining even-keeled. _Had anyone challenged her so arrogantly before?_ She glared at an infuriatingly calm adversary. Sitting down, Moira was at actual eye level to Angela. _Had she ever met someone so irritatingly tall?_

Angela swallowed the knot of anger in her throat, collecting her temper.

“What issue do you have with it?”

“Well…I’m sure its sufficient for publication in a journal for curiosity reading. But I need more context to your choices regarding the radiology frequencies, and the design of the coil driver itself. A lot of it you wave off as proprietary and unrelated to the purview of Cell. Why you didn’t submit to more bioengineering journals is simply beyond me…” Moira trailed off, realizing she was insulting her acquaintance yet again. “Anyhow, perhaps it was intentional, but I don’t think I, or anyone else, could reconstruct your trials from these publications and raw data.”

Angela looked at her quizzically. “Yes, I am purposefully defensive of my work in my publications. Especially after Overwatch desired my technology for private use.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

Moira’s question caught the nanobiologist off guard.

“How do I feel…about Overwatch?”

“About them muzzling you.”

“I wouldn’t call it muzzling,” Angela retorted, though there was a note of uncertainty in her voice. She took a breath, contemplating speaking on private misgivings. “Sometimes I do wonder about if the tech could do more good if it were openly accessible. But Overwatch provides the funding, and there are few causes that would require such focused science. Maybe after it is perfected, I will go ahead with wider exposure.”

“Well. I’m sure it will catch on when that occurs. It is extraordinarily innovative and flexible tech.”

The frank compliment made Angela blush.

“Thank you.”

“As such, I do appreciate your willingness to let me in on pushing its applications into new fields,” O’Deorain continued matter-of-factly. Angela felt her heart dull a bit. Of course, this sweet-talk was just Dr. O’Deorain buttering up a source of information.

“What do you need from me?”

“Would you happen to have lab notes from the early periods of the trials? If they are complete and of utility.”’

Angela sighed. “Yes.” She went to retrieve them from her office.

She returned with three notebooks to see Moira absently leaned over her current notes, open from when Angela’s work was so abruptly interrupted.

“Have you considered if the suspension fluids could be causing treatment rejection?”

Angela set the books down on the counter. “What?”

Moira stood up straight.

“It doesn’t appear that you’ve checked the suspension fluids’ long term compatibility with immune responses,” the geneticist remarked rather boredly. “Your patients aren’t on immunosuppressants this time, correct?”

Angela blinked. “Well, no. But I don’t see how the suspension could be of any issues, it really is only saline and a couple antibody samples to address common bacterial infectors—”

“Get rid of them.” Moira walked past her to leaf through the old lab notebooks. Angela looked down at her pages and back at the other scientist, who didn’t look up. “They very well may be triggering an immune response to deactivate your nanites.”

Angela fell silent.

“The anti-inflammatories must be masking most of the reaction—”

“Most likely, yes.”

Moira looked over at her, quite pleased with herself, but the doctor was too deep in thought to notice.

“But…why the lungs?”

Her guest snapped the notebook shut and placed it back on the stack. “Not sure about that one, Dr. Ziegler. Physiology is your expertise, not mine.” She hoisted the hardbacks into her arms. “Thank you, Angela.”

“You’re welcome, Moira…” she replied distractedly, not noticing the other woman’s successful attempt at a first-name basis. O’Deorain strode out the lab with a small satisfied smile.

Moira took much longer to digest this material than she had the previous readings. But, inevitably, her email slipped into Angela’s inbox the next Tuesday, almost lost among the reams of peer review and internship position requests. She set it aside to look at it last, taking her usual weekly ritual of politely rejecting most of such requests.

(“There really isn’t any need for you to do that, Angela,” Winston had admonished her once. “We could even get you set up with an AI assistant to take care of that.” Angela had replied that she never knew if she would miss anything valuable—and it was worth staying on good terms with colleagues of her field. Though now that her name was quickly gaining notoriety, the inbox began to fill at rates she’d never had before. Maybe she would take Winston up on the offer.)

She clicked Moira’s email at last. She expected another barrage of questions, but it was a simple request.

“Would like to discuss the work further. Coffee?”

Angela couldn’t help her smile. Her watch went off before she could type a response, however. Her shift started in 5 minutes—four floors down. She bolted, grabbing her phone and keys. She almost ran into the lab door, remembering something else.

“Harriet, could you change the growth mediums on my suspension test plates—”

“Sure, Angela.”

“Thank you!”

She made it to the medbay without much time to spare. The rest of the shift went smoothly. Angela’s two patients that had been struggling were doing much better off the nanites with a traditional course of therapeutics. She was still mocking up suspension serums in her lab without the components that Moira had advised to remove. The results were yet to be conclusive, as she decided that she ought to conduct longer term experiments with her two formulas, likely in mouse models. Her head twinged with frustration every time the predicament came to mind—another delay on the project. _No matter_ , she tried to speak to herself like the young protégés she mentored. _That’s the process of science._

She hadn’t packed a lunch, so her brief break was spent eating a questionable meatloaf in the facility cafeteria. She poked at it absentmindedly, looking around the half-empty room for anyone she recognized. (No O’Deorain.) Memory of her email returned to Angela, who felt a bit guilty for leaving her hanging. She checked her watch. Two hours to the end of her shift. She could afford a coffee break before returning to her lab.

* * *

Two hours later, Angela clocked out and headed down the street to the nearby coffee shop. She realized she wasn’t sure what O’Deorain’s order was, so she bought a black coffee and stuffed some sugar and cream cups into her pockets. It was a large, because she reasoned that the woman probably needed a significant volume of the beverage to get appreciable caffeination.

She took the empty elevator down to B2 and rapped smartly on the lab door. No response. She tried again.

“Not ready yet, Gabriel!” her shout was muffled by the heavy metal door.

“It’s me, O’Deorain!”

There was a silence. The door swung open, startling Angela. Moira towered in the doorway, her expression rather surprised as well.

“Won’t you call me Moira?” she said, sounding mildly vexed.

“I brought coffee, Moira.”

Angela waggled the tray in her hands. Moira looked down at them, then back up at her unexpected guest.

“I didn’t anticipate that you’d…” The geneticist trailed off, stepping back to let her in.

“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to respond to your email. I hope this makes up for it.” Angela set the coffee tray down on the counter. “Oh,” she remembered, jamming her hands in her pockets for the sugar and cream packets. She dropped them on the bench next to the coffees. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure what your order was. It’s a black coffee.” Angela nodded at the taller cup.

“That’s fine, thank you.” Moira mumbled, lifting her drink and warming her hands. She sipped at it without adding any cream or sugar. Angela tucked this detail away in her head.

“Well?” Angela felt at ease for the first time around the geneticist—maybe it was the dynamic of her finally catching Moira off guard. “What did you want to discuss?”

Moira leaned against the counter, her gaze clearing and focusing on Angela. The intensity of her attention frequently left Angela a bit nervous. She wasn’t nervous this time—though she felt a strange thrill.

“I really do appreciate you sharing your work with me like this,” she spoke after a pause. “I tried to think of a way to repay the favor.”

Angela smiled and shook her head. “That isn’t necessary. Just keep me in your good graces, and update me on what you do with it. I know you’ll do interesting things.” Moira didn’t exactly smile back, though Angela thought she sensed a new warmth in her colleague’s quizzical expression.

“Of course.”

Angela looked around. The lab bench seemed largely empty.

“What have you been working on today?” She recalled the scientist’s impatient reaction to her knock. “Reyes keeping you on your toes?”

Moira chuckled shortly. “That’s one way to put it.”

They chatted about their respective projects. Moira was a bit reticent about detailing her activity, though it did seem like she was making marked progress. She mentioned being in correspondence with some old connections more adept in mechanical and electrical engineering than her, which made sense to Angela. She would’ve connected Moira with Torbjorn, if the circumstances hadn’t been so.

The conversation turned to Angela’s turn of events with her nanobiotics. She confessed her frustration, and Moira listened with genuine interest. She contributed a few insights that gave Angela pause. They debated the merits of each other’s ideas on occasion, though one would often have to concede an argument on the grounds that the other knew more about their field than the other.

The two quickly settled into a Tuesday routine. It was always Angela who visited Moira in her underground lab. She didn’t want to have to talk about why she was sneaking around the lab when it came to the disgraced geneticist, but Moira didn’t question it. Either she knew and understood, or she trusted the routine as is.

Angela found herself looking forward to her hour-ish chats with her colleague. She hadn’t come up against a mind of such high caliber in a long time. Overwatch was rewarding; the doctor-researcher appreciated the respect and leadership she was granted in the organization. But she found the almost adversarial challenges of Moira O’Deorain’s mind refreshing.

The Irish geneticist seemed to think with relentless acceleration, while Angela was much more measured in her statements. She discovered that her conversational partner had a penchant for grand proclamations, which Angela often endeavored to get to the heart of. But even during those characteristically expansive moments, Moira seemed to pick her words carefully. Angela found herself wondering what first came into her mind before she spoke—what occurred that she combed through, discarded, refined. All that came out of her mouth seemed to hold a weight that sometimes exceeded their reason. Angela couldn’t deny their allure.

There were one or two moments where she seemed to slip, however. One or two, when Angela Ziegler remembered who she was talking to. Her assertions and demands would become a bit overzealous, crossing into deeper ethical waters without a concern for their premises.

“There is little need for such hesitance, Angela,” she would insist. She told her off for her caution with applying an untested aspect of treatment clinically, or expounded on the directions that she predicted genetic modification and acceleration of interventional science that would take place. “Won’t it be marvelous? One just hopes that this cohort of scientists have the courage to ask the questions previous researchers were afraid to even consider.” She would sip her coffee, her vivid eyes perfectly lucid, staring straight at Angela’s quiet, uncertain expression. In those moments, the doctor just elected to answer noncommittally, or not at all. Moira didn’t break her stride, though she clearly sensed there was a shift in energy. The conversation would carry on, and Angela would shake her anxieties just as quickly as they settled.

In spite of momentary misgivings, Angela found Moira’s firebrand confidence improbably attractive. _She has good reason to be proud,_ Angela found herself justifying. She had read up a bit more about her previous work; the paper that had been retracted by the publication but was still floating around the internet. The experiments were dangerous, thoughtlessly pursued—but genius. The most remarkable part was that they had worked. If Dr. Moira O’Deorain wasn’t such an adept scientist, her work would have been paid little attention. What could’ve been a shameful oddity or fancy was now the key to a Pandora’s box that the scientific world had decided to slam shut.

With all this, Angela felt her own sense of pride that Moira saw her up to snuff as a mental sparring partner. The geneticist wasn’t exactly generous, not like Angela was. But in her own way, she bestowed a type of attention that Angela felt was rare from someone so elusively preeminent.

One specific moment reminded her of the danger of this type of sentiment, however. Angela had been in conversation with a PI of her lab, walking down a first floor hallway when she saw Moira approaching in the other direction, always in her purposeful, brisk pace. Angela met her gaze, hinting a warm smile in her eyes, pleased to see her about for a moment. But what returned was an absent glance, a pass-over so dismissive and almost contemptuous that her heart sank into her stomach. Her «lab colleague didn’t seem to notice.

Angela found herself returning to a course of thoughts that hadn’t occurred since the beginning of their acquaintanceship. She wondered how much of all of this was just a calculation in her methodically chaotic plan…whatever it was. She realized with mild dismay that she was rather ensnared.

 _I’m in control,_ Angela reminded herself. She held the cards for the progression of Moira’s projects, she was the one what was being pursued for her expertise. And, with her intervention, Moira O’Deorain had turned to better causes. If a false sense of authority made Moira cooperative, Angela didn’t want her own ego in the way.

And so, O’Deorain and Ziegler became synchronized actors, secret collaborators. They were quite an odd pair, O’Deorain pointed out one afternoon. A rising young star and a disgraced authority in her field. “Don’t say that as if it’s permanent,” Angela chided seriously.

Moira couldn’t help but chuckle at her junior, a genius sometimes so naïve.

“Sure, darling."

(That got a good blush out of the doctor.)


	4. Chapter 4

Dr. Ziegler was assigned a new project. Commander Morrison was more than pleased upon visiting the London facility and witnessing the nanites in action. The major kinks of the system were worked out over the course of three months—marvelously fast progress.

“Will this technology will be suitable for mobilization?” he had asked. Angela hesitated for a moment.

“I believe it could be adapted,” she replied carefully. Morrison nodded.

“Great. You’re in touch with Lindholm? If you require anything else, get in contact with me. You’ll have all the resources of Overwatch at your disposal.”

He was already halfway out the door.

“Commander?”

He turned.

“Can you promise that the biotics will not be used in violence?”

Morrison regarded her curiously.

“We are in wartime, Dr. Ziegler,” he said flatly. “Your technology will save Overwatch lives on the ground, just as they do in your hospital.”

Angela didn’t have a response to this, and the Commander left.

* * *

Torbjorn contacted her the next day over video call, thrilled to take on a new project.

“I’ve already been working on an armor suit for you,” he rambled. “I have a great idea for a functionality I’ve been tinkering with for years...are you afraid of heights?”

Angela didn’t hear his peculiar question. “An armor suit?”

“Yes, your active duty suit.” Torbjorn paused. “Did Morrison tell you...?”

“No,” she said in a clipped voice. “He did not.”

“Ah.” The Swede quietened uncharacteristically. Angela confronted a new wave of unease.

“I’ll forward you the schematics of the bedside device,” Angela finally said.

“Thank you. I’m thinking of a staff design—it would be the most efficient way of implementing the length of the coil chamber and could provide utility in...err...field mobility.”

“Sounds good, Torbjorn.” Angela mustered a smile. He regarded her dubiously.

“Are you okay, Angela?” 

She nodded quickly.

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

“All right.”

* * *

“That’s exciting.”

Moira sat cross-legged at her office chair, poring over her messy notes. She lifted her coffee for a deep sip, the cup leaving a mark on one of her charts. She set it on the lab bench next to her, right next to a particularly noxious open Erlenmeyer of organic waste. Angela gingerly lifted the flask and moved it to the other end of the counter.

“I’m...I never wanted this.” Angela mumbled.

“Didn’t you?”

The doctor stared at her. Moira didn’t look up, her tone blasé.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“The mission and means of Overwatch are no secrets,” she responded pointedly. “You joined because they’d elevate your work, and the narrative of peacekeeping medicine is just what it needed.”

Angela glared at her.

“I joined Overwatch because of its resources and reach. Not to work in combat.”

“A natural extension of your role. Haven’t you worked as a combat medic before?”

“Yes.” Angela grit her teeth.

“Then you wouldn’t find it a challenge, would you?”

There was a long enough silence for Moira to look up at her companion. She took in her distress and stood up, drawing closer to Angela. Angela stared down at the counter, willing herself not to cry.

“It’s important work,” Moira said in a tone gentle enough to make her look up in surprise. She put her hand over Angela’s on the counter and squeezed. “You’re the only one who could implement the tech, especially in the field.” Even with the tinge of compassion, her words were characteristically matter of fact.

She seemed to mean it, too. O’Deorain rarely said things she didn’t mean. Angela felt a tear escape down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away with her other hand.

“It’s a duty,” she breathed. “I know I should. I just...I don’t know if I’m strong enough.” She sniffled quietly, unable to meet the other woman’s curious gaze. “I don’t know if I can go back.”

Moira was silent. She didn’t ask the questions Angela feared, but also partially hoped she would ask. Moira stepped back, giving her space. Angela felt a part of her yearning for her to return back to her proximity, to draw closer... _God, she was so lonely._

“You’re capable of doing it, Angela,” she said, settling back into her seat and rifling through her notes again. “Your duty extends to what you feel is right. This includes to you, and to your work, your science.

Angela chuckled in spite of her tears. “Always about the science with you, huh O’Deorain?”

Moira shot her a mischievous smirk. “Of course.”

* * *

Angela picked up enthusiasm as her work moved forward. The tech was stable and effective in inpatient therapeutics by now. Torbjorn’s genius with armor extended to engineering a portable delivery system. She worked with the electrical engineer who had designed the clinic machines, and she found herself feeling the original wonderment of progress from the first time she saw the nanites come into fruition. Except this time, it was in a sleekly efficient staff.

Its stable heft was impressive for a prototype—Torbjorn’s more newfound familiarity with non-metallic materials was showing his mastery. 

One Tuesday, she brought it down to Moira to show her. She watched the other scientist wrap her own hands around the handle—ergonomic to Angela’s grip, but slightly too small for Moira’s.

“Any ideas for a name?”

“Hm.” She spun it in her deft fingers. “Caduceus would be an appropriate nod, no?”

Angela smiled at her usual poetic theatricality. “Appropriate. I like it. The Caduceus staff.”

Angela accepted the prototype back from Moira and set it carefully against the counter. The bench surface was bare again. Moira sat down at an equally empty desk.

“How is your system coming along?” Angela inquired lightly.

Moira’s expression tightened, and it was only then that Angela noticed her sour mood.

Moira had become more and more erratic the past few weeks, in both temperament and commitment. There were a couple Tuesdays where Moira was a complete no-show, her lab locked and empty. Angela had sent her a couple emails at first, to which she only received curt replies about “other business, other matters…”. Curiosity getting the better of her, Angela would come down to B2 and peer into the window in the door—one week, it was completely dark, every day. Despite this, Angela persisted with her visits—though she often found herself passing coffee on to a thankful colleague or lab assistant rather than O’Deorain.

On the weeks where she was present, the workspace was often chaotically cluttered, the epitome of the living, breathing lab. It was almost as frantic as its inhabitant—an appropriate word for Moira O’Deorain during one of these tears. She confessed to Angela that she slept in her office during these moments, when she couldn’t afford to abandon an overnight experiment that would complete at 3 AM. “Have you eaten?” Angela would find herself asking. Moira shrugged. The next week, Angela brought a case of nutritional snacks and instant meals down to B2. “Refrain from making these in your agar microwave, please,” she would add. Moira would only laugh at her half-joke.

Angela didn’t know what to make of this personality of inconstancy, so opposed to her own insistence on diligence. The lost opportunities for progress often frustrated her—a feeling that she often let Moira know about. “You just need to hang on…let me know if you need anything for your next step,” she once said helpfully during a particularly slow Tuesday. Moira nodded vaguely. “Thank you.”

Angela was lucky that Moira was in the lab this week. But it appeared to be one of those days.

“It is trying.” She ran her fingers through her messy bright hair, resting her forehead in her hands. “It’s been difficult to keep....to keep motivation. Especially when things slow down.” 

Angela nodded knowingly. “That’s when you really have to buckle down. Have faith.”

Moira scoffed lightly, and Angela felt the snub. “Right. Faith.”

She raised her eyes to look at her guest. Angela just noticed the dark circles under the geneticist’s normally vivid eyes. She also noticed the mild contempt in them.

“I’m under an immense pressure, Angela,” Moira spoke tersely. “They’re expecting me to prove myself. I can’t fall behind, but I’m often working with shoestrings.” 

Angela puffed up a bit in response to her near-hostility. “You have plenty of resources here,” she gestured. Moira smiled in what Angela took as an infuriatingly condescending manner, a tone that she had thought they had moved on from weeks ago.

“They don’t grant me the same support they grant you, _star_ Dr. Ziegler.”

The doctor felt her stomach turn in indignancy.

“I couldn’t blame them for reasonable expectations of a timetable,” Angela retorted. “Experiments run into dead ends and obstacles all the time. You should know better than to let it get the best of you.”

Moira bristled.

“It’s always ‘should’ with you.” The fatigue in her voice gave way to unadulterated irritation. “You don’t understand. Don’t act like you do.” 

“How could I, when you’re so cagey about sharing much of it at all?” Angela paused. “And I think a sense of _‘should’_ can benefit everyone.” She didn’t quite work up the nerve to point Moira out directly, but the implication was there.

“Since when have you been so intent on inserting yourself into my business? Or, not even just at my business, but how I conduct it?” Moira’s voice was measured but her entire being was tense, her nails digging into her palms and her bowed neck unmoving as she refused to look Angela in the face.

“Ever since I decided to grant you access to my work. Since I trusted you to make a good use of it.”

Moira whirled around, eyes flashing with a degree of emotion that staggered Angela. “Trust me, I wouldn’t have asked if I knew it came with this micromanagement.”

Angela blinked incredulously.

“Run along, doctor,” Moira’s tone shifted on a dime again. She nodded dismissively. Angela felt her cheeks redden with ire. “It’s better off that you don’t associate with me, right?”

The doctor was speechless, her mouth opening and shutting which only provoked Moira’s amusement and Angela’s anger. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the lab, slamming the heavy door with a _thud_ that rattled glassware.

* * *

Angela didn’t return the following Tuesday, or the week after. She found herself regretting giving away all her work, her expertise…herself…so freely. _What had gotten into her?_ She should’ve known the risks of working with Moira O’Deorain. All of this time and effort invested into a collaborator who didn’t appreciate it—didn’t even _want_ the help. And now she had no idea what was being done with the tech she had signed off.

She couldn’t trust the geneticist now, but was she a fool to trust her before? When she had barely really told Angela about her work or progress, when she had taken everything Angela had given with little return? She bemoaned her willingness to give O’Deorain such benefits of the doubt. _She’s defensive, she’s shy. She’s been through too much; her distrust of judgement makes sense. She works alone._ Angela couldn’t believe her carelessness. She had been used.

 _She can’t decipher half of it without me,_ Angela tried to assure herself when the anxious thoughts overtook her. _She’s still in exploratory phases._ And yet, a part of her knew the risks of underestimating Dr. O’Deorain. Angela had gone ahead and reopened the fears the scientific community had appropriately shut away. Maybe she had aided and abetted its growth. Angela scoffed when the irony occurred to her. _Maybe she didn’t want her name on her stolen work after all._

Moira’s basement-dwelling manner did not facilitate many chance encounters between the two, but Angela began to notice her more often in the breakroom, or leaned over the coffee vending machine buying two tiny cups of black coffee. A sort of awful, bitter satisfaction came over Angela when she observed Moira’s state without her, the tired frustration in her face and the unkemptness of her usually well-maintained appearance.

But besides those moments of indulging her grudge, Dr. Ziegler did her best to keep her ex-colleague (ex-friend?) out of her mind. She had her own work to do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! thanks for reading.  
> the next two chapters are short because i wanted to split off the explicit chapter from the rest of the narrative. if you don't want to read [essentially moicy porn], feel free to skip to the next chapter (6). i'll have a brief recap of what happens in this chapter at the beginning of the next one. :)

She came to her when Angela least expected. Another late evening, closing up the lab after a long medbay shift. She heard her last colleague call out a goodbye—but she failed to notice the wordless newcomer that slipped through the opened door and her long, urgent strides until Moira was practically on top of her. Angela turned, and there she was, her hypnotizing fragrance welcome after weeks of unconscious longing for it. The heat of Moira’s body was electric, just as apparent as the first day in the walk-in, except now it was because they were only centimeters from each other.

Angela felt her eyes shut before she realized the other woman was going to kiss her. She could feel herself melting into Moira, feeling her strong, nimble hands against her cheek, the softness of her lips, just as she had imagined them. 

Moira shoved the coat Angela had halfway donned off of her and the doctor let her, fumbling to hang it over a nearby stool without breaking their embrace. Moira nearly foiled her effort, impatiently pressing her up against the counter, her lips hungry and insistent, lighting a line of searing kisses from Angela’s lips and down her jawbone. Angela wrapped her arms around Moira’s neck, who mumbled in frustration at her uncomfortable stooping to kiss Angela. Moira made up her mind, abruptly lifting the other woman onto the (thankfully empty) counter. 

Angela yelped in surprise, which quickly turned to sighs of pleasure as Moira’s hands unbuttoned her blouse and skimmed over her breasts, prefacing the feeling of Moira’s mouth on her. Angela tangled her fingers in her short, messy hair, unconscious to the sounds escaping her parted lips. Her body burned for her touch. The flashes of desire over months of shy observation bloomed to a lust that warmed her from her core to her extremities.

“I’ve wanted you so badly,” Moira rumbled in her ear, which elicited a shiver down Angela’s back. “I was waiting for you to come to me, but I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Good,” was all Angela could get out before letting out a needy moan, Moira returning to teasing her nipples with her lips. 

She ached between her thighs for attention. This arrangement wouldn’t do. Angela pushed lightly back at Moira, who stopped to look into her eyes.

“I have a couch,” she breathed, slipping off the bench and leading her to her office. She stepped in first, closing the blinds and locking the door. Moira grasped her by the hips, pulling her down onto the little loveseat in the corner of the dimmed office. Angela helped her pull the clothes off her own body, the cool climate-controlled air prompting goosebumps across her skin. She could see a warm, reverent smile come across Moira’s face as she regarded her in the half-dark, her bright eyes roaming her body with full, deep attention. Angela wasn’t embarrassed: she only tugged at her hands to return to her skin.

“Touch me,” she whined softly.

“Ask nicely.”

Angela shuddered with desire.

“Please, touch me.”

She couldn’t describe the ecstasy of Moira O’Deorain’s work on her body if she tried. Angela found herself squeezing her eyes shut, unsuccessfully trying to stifle increasingly desperate moans as slender, deft hands alternated between rubbing her, fucking her deeply, and teasing her body, her skin, between her legs. She could hear Moira’s own breath quicken alongside her own, feeling her warm breath against her chest as the woman leaned forward against her, two fingers deep inside of her, bringing her so close to the brink she hadn’t known was waiting just under her skin.

“Moira,” she gasped, pleading. “Moira, I’m...I’m so close.” 

Her lover was just as breathless with exertion. The open desire in her quiet, low voice brought Angela that much closer. “Good girl.” she breathed into her ear, kissing her neck, sucking the delicate skin there until she marked it.

Angela’s hips bucked as she came, a cry of pleasure escaping her as she rode out her orgasm on Moira’s hands. Her lover let her come back down gradually but remained inside, still drawing aftershocks and whimpers from Angela.

She didn’t think she would be able to go another round until Moira’s mouth was on her this time, her tongue divine and just as nimble as her fingers—

Angela shot up in bed, her heart rate just as fast as it had been in her unconsciousness. Her hands had wandered under the waist of her underwear, warm and slick against herself. She extracted her hands, wiping her wetness against the inside of her already soaked briefs.

She scooted to a seated position and fell back against the headboard in defeat, trying to catch her breath. She had definitely come in her sleep to the thought...the fully imagined scenario...of Moira taking her in her office. And even now, after this somewhat shameful revelation, her pussy ached for more. 

Angela didn’t think anyone had garnered such potent desire in her before. Her recurring dreams focused on Moira had come to a head (literally), and thinly suppressed lust finally broke through Angela’s dogged efforts to push O’Deorain from her mind.

She groaned, shutting her eyes, willing herself to return to the dream again. _How had Moira’s mouth felt on her?_ Despite her efforts, all she could see in her mind were her heterochromic eyes, boring into her with her trademark perceptiveness. Angela missed being seen by them, being undressed by them, if only mentally and emotionally.

She turned to her side, eventually drifting off to the thought of Moira’s warm voice and just the feeling of her innocuous touch, the few times she had ever felt the other woman’s skin in comforting hand squeezes, or the brush of fingers as they passed coffees or beakers to each other. 

_This desire was dangerous,_ Angela would later recognize that morning. _But damn, if it wasn’t comforting. And hot._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basic recap of previous chapter: angela has a lurid dream of reconciliation sex with moira. (she really, really misses her.)

Her waking hours were, thankfully, too hectic to have any room for thoughts of O’Deorain. 

Angela embarked on her first field mission, three weeks after their falling out. Carrying her completed staff and outfitted in Torbjorn’s sleek armor, Angela felt like a retrofitted version of her younger self, returning to a war zone to save as many lives as possible, a task often impossible for a single medic and her mortal supplies.

Except this time, she carried miracles.

Torbjorn had built mechanical wings onto her armor suit. Angela couldn’t believe their successful function until she was hovering nervously over the Overwatch combat training room mats.

“Are you aware of how comically cliche all of this is?” Angela joked, attempting basic directional maneuvers from the safe few feet above the ground. Torbjorn craned his head up at her, a silly grin on his bearded face.

“Of course, Angela.” He rested his prosthetic hand on his waist. “Wait until you hear your callsign.”

 _An Angel of Mercy._ The doctor stifled a scoff at Morrison’s briefing. The theatrics of Overwatch never ceased.

The mission had been minor in Overwatch’s grander schemes. They almost hadn’t anticipated any resistance in the rural German town but of course, a small outpost of hostile actors were present to cause trouble. None of Overwatch’s forces were seriously injured, perhaps due to the success of Angela’s new implements.

What jarred the professional Dr. Ziegler was when she encountered a young teen, practically a child, caught in the crossfire. She had been reckless, rushing forward to gather the teenager in her arms and usher her to safety. She was lucky that the commanding officer noticed her movement immediately and shouted to his officers to push forward and cover her.

Angela’s wings raised to wrap over the two of them as they stumbled to safety, the pinging of debris and what she hoped wasn’t bullets against the metal alloy deafening her.

“Are you in pain?” Angela inquired almost robotically, so accustomed to the urgent efficiency of treating many field agents at once, giving each just enough time to take care of them all. But the child’s uncomprehending terror snapped her out of it, made her own stomach drop. She remembered where they were posted and tried again in her best approximation at Standard German. The girl’s face softened into relief and recognition.

“My chest, it aches...” she wheezed, and a new wave of dismay passed over the doctor. She lifted her patient’s shirt, palpating and diagnosing what just seemed to be potentially broken or bruised ribs. She sighed in relief, reaching for her staff strapped to her back.

“This may feel strange, maybe a bit warm at first, okay?” She clicked the adjustment meter with shaking hands, doing her best to estimate the correct dosage for her young patient. The girl nodded resolutely, tears cutting tracks down her grimy cheeks. Angela pressed the trigger, the staff a few inches from her injured chest. The triple pronged head jumped to life, rotating steadily as it stabilized the golden beam that bathed her patient.

The girl flinched, her face screwing in pain. Angela reached forward with a gentle hand, pushing her hair out of her face in what she hoped was a comforting manner.

The repair took less than a few minutes. The spark of remnant adrenaline pulled the child’s eyes wide as they often did at such treatments of immediate, intense concentrations of nanites. Angela strapped her staff back onto the electromagnetic holster, getting up and offering a hand. The child stood, apparently not much worse for the wear.

“Do you have family here?” Angela looked around, noticing that the volleys of projectiles had somewhat quietened. At least, it appeared the fight was moving away from the area.

“I was out at the shops for them.” She turned to look down the luckily untouched direction of the street. “We live down there.”

Angela glanced between opposite ends of the street, back in the direction where the strike team’s units had presumably moved down. Could she spare the time to escort the child?

“Mercy, status update?” crackled her earpiece, making her jump.

“Civilian is stabilized,” Angela responded. “Does anyone require medical attention where you are?”

“Negative.”

“Okay.” Angela glanced down at her charge again, making up her mind. “I’m taking the child back to her family, I will be with you shortly.”

There was a pointed silence on the line, but Angela paid it no mind.

“Affirmative.”

Angela was already kneeled down in front of the patient, powering up the exosuit capabilities of Torbjorn’s design. She felt the mechanisms click on, bolstering her limbs imperceptibly.

“We’re going to get you home quickly. What is your home address?”

Her navigation system registered the coordinates, her halo-mounted head up display indicating directions. Angela gathered the child into her arms, the suit’s additional support rendering the exertion more than manageable.

“I need you to hold onto me tightly, okay? Close your eyes, don’t open them. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes.” 

She wrapped her arms tightly around Angela’s neck and they ascended into the air. Her wings soared them above the town’s short rooftops, the buffeting wind making the medic squint until her halo’s deflection system kicked on.

The flight was successful, if not with a slightly rough landing. The jolt of the system’s effort at withstanding their touchdown sent a shock up Angela’s shins, but she suppressed her gasp of pain.

Angela barely had time to accept the family’s profuse thanking, advising them to bring the child to a hospital checkup as soon as possible before flying back to join the strike team. The rest of the day was spent patching up soldiers, cleaning up what was luckily a successful mission. All the stolen arms had been recovered. The pickup ship lowered into the town’s courtyard, and Angela let out a sigh of relief she had been holding all day. 

* * *

Ana Amari seemed to have a psychic sense of when her officers needed a check in.

“I thought it was all okay until I saw the kid...” Angela shook her head. Ana glanced furtively out the empty conference room windows before taking a seat next to the medic.

“Your mission was more than successful.” Her tone was chastising. “You saved—completely healed—the civilian.”

“The _child_ , Ana.” Angela shot her a doubtful look. “She was a child.”

“And you saved her.”

Angela sighed.

“I can’t help but wonder if we’re just bringing more war to these kids...these people. The Omnic Crisis ended...and yet we bring combat to areas already ravaged a decade ago.”

“You know we are a peacekeeping force.” Ana frowned. “We only respond when there is a threat.”

“Yeah, but sometimes we anticipate one before it happens. We _try_ to anticipate one. Maybe we act unnecessarily.”

Ana was silent in the way Angela knew meant she was gathering her words, just as strategic as when she was acting the commander.

“We cannot wonder about what could have been in matters like these, Angela. We can only serve our best and learn from every mission.”

 _In matters like these._ Angela wanted to roll her eyes. _In matters of war,_ she knew Ana had wanted to say. She looked at her commanding officer, her face both young and combat weary for her middle age. Angela could recognize the glint in her eyes from those of the soldiers she had patched up over and over again, the ones who visited their younger officers and soldiers in the hospitals, who spoke few words but had everything in their heads. The burdens of war never left these soldiers’ shoulders or minds—Ana Amari, the hardened leader, always alert, always conscientious, was a prime example. 

Angela was not such an individual. Maybe because her formative experiences of war were when she was a child even younger than her recent patient, when everything felt large and terrible and all completely out of her control. Maybe she was just too weak to take on such a mantle, even now.

Angela breathed deeply. “There are too many missions like these...too many lives that could’ve been like theirs. Except nobody is there to save them.”

Ana's smile was characteristically jaded. She got up from the table, clearly ready for the conversation to be over.

“Well then, you’d better do your best to be there for them.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief mention of self harm. no description, no implied scene.

Dr. Angela Ziegler, callsign Mercy, was fast becoming a hero within Overwatch and outside of it, too. It seemed stories of a glowing angel descending upon battlefields caught on in the imaginations of the public. It dawned on her in a active duty team-wide meeting (of which she had only recently started being called to join) that Overwatch had plenty to gain from the public’s perception of her. The slideshow clicked through a couple clips and photos of reporting on their last mission—many of them prominently featuring Angela flying in on conspicuously golden wings, Caduceus staff in hand. A few officers turned during the presentation to acknowledge her in the back of the room, to which she could only flash a polite smile.

 _The face of Overwatch’s peacekeeping presence._ Angela couldn’t figure out if the feeling in her stomach was of thrilled gratification or deep unease.

It had only been three weeks—three weeks, of five missions, some of which were overnight deployments. 48 hours until there was sight of the extraction ship, until Angela could let the tension out of every fiber of her body, and she could nap against the straps of the ship’s stiff seats. She would then have to slog herself to the bullet train station under Swiss HQ, usually purchasing a hot meal to go from a station vendor and wolfing it down on the commute. Upon making it home, Angela would immediately fall asleep, sometimes barely able to undress from her work attire she wore under her armor—fitted, temperature regulating black leggings and turtleneck.

Her hesitance to relinquish significant hospital hours went unheeded by both the Overwatch medical director and Captain Amari. “No soldier could manage to be a full-time doctor and scientist,” Amari had told her, waving her away when she appealed to her authority to let her back onto more of her regular hours.

So here she was, left with an entirely empty Tuesday. She had slept in for the first morning in ages, and she would have to admit that it felt positively glorious. But it was early afternoon now. Everyone she knew was, of course, at work. Angela stared glassily at a single page of her latest leisure reading—a layman’s guide to the innovations of phage therapy—until she came to and snapped the book shut. 1:35 in the afternoon, and Dr. Ziegler was simmering in boredom.

She got changed into some standard work attire, a sweater and a pair of jeans with a thick coat, and headed out the door. It was a drizzly London spring afternoon, and Angela felt like she was waking up to her regular self already, her feet bringing her to her favorite coffee shop. She stood in the doorway to shake the rain off her umbrella when she realized the furtive glances shot her way by the few inhabitants of the shop. She folded her umbrella and walked to the counter.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Ziegler!” the familiar barista greeted her. Angela smiled back. “You haven’t been by on a Tuesday in ages! Your usual?”

“Yes, Billie, thank you,” Angela said distractedly, until she realized the barista was reaching for a second, large cup. “Oh, just the small coffee for today.”

“Oh, of course.”

Angela paid and stepped back into her usual waiting spot—against the glass window of the storefront, close enough by the pickup counter to hear her name being called. The precipitation seemed to be coming down harder by the minute, the sheets of rain washing the pavements and creating fast flowing streams down the gutters of the streets. She hoped her little umbrella would make it to the biomedical facility.

“Angela?”

She collected her warm drink. “Thank you.”

“And a muffin, on the house.” Billie winked and slipped her a warm paper bag. “For Mercy.”

Angela laughed nervously, unsure what to say. She could feel the curious gazes in the room on her. “Thanks, Billie.” She tucked the bag under her arm and hurried out the door, getting pelted by rain for a moment until she was able to pop the umbrella open and flee the establishment.

It was on this Tuesday that happened to Angela find her.

She had contemplated wandering up to her lab. Going to the medbay wouldn’t be particularly fruitful or advised when she wasn’t on duty...but maybe she could check on her cell cultures that she set her interns on.

Her pace was leisurely, walking down the hall with the cafeteria on one side of her, and the first-floor breakroom on the other. Angela glanced in. It was empty, save for a familiar figure seated at a table near the window.

 _Moira._ It had been a long time since Mercy’s mind had happened upon the geneticist. She realized how rarely she had seen her about, even just in the common areas of the facility. _Had she seen her at all in weeks?_

Angela found herself slowing, staring through the window as the back of her neck prickled. There was something wrong.

Moira’s chin was slumped against her chest, the slackness of her body almost threatening to slide her out of her chair. An untouched vending machine coffee sat, still steaming, on the table in front of her. Angela would’ve thought she was dozing if it wasn’t for the imperceptible muscle spasms causing O’Deorain’s irregular trembling.

Angela shoved through the door, slowing to avoid causing her any harm. She pressed her palm against Moira’s cold cheek, gently lifting her head.

“Moira? Moira, can you hear me?” She gently pulled an eye open. Her brilliantly red eye was rolled up, pupils wide and unseeing. “Try to make a sound if you can hear me, Moira.”

No response. Her breath was fast and shallow. Angela’s stomach dropped. She looked up to see someone walking by the window, and straightened up, waving her arms.

“Hey!” she shouted, and the man looked over in surprise. “Go to the medbay and tell them there’s an epileptic emergency in the breakroom!”

He nodded, turning and jogging back up the hall. 

Angela turned her attention back to O’Deorain, looking her up and down. She considered trying to lower her to the floor, but she knew the likelihood of dropping the taller woman was too great. She settled for supporting her against the chair.

 _No signs of traumatic injury...maybe she hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept? Goddamn you, O’Deorain,_ she cursed her mentally. _Can’t even keep yourself alive..._

Angela was checking for muscle spasms in her extremities when she spotted the dark purple discoloration in her right hand. She reached down, carefully lifting it to the light. Her eyes widened.

Deep purple veins threaded under Moira’s translucent skin, angry and stark in her slender hand. Angela gingerly rolled up the sleeve of her dress shirt, gasping at how far it had wandered up her forearm, the mottling of plum tones worsening at the crook of the elbow. _A blood infection...? What type of sepsis looked purple?_

Angela looked at Moira, a moment of her medical poise dropping as she properly registered the geneticist’s face. Deathly pale, emaciated, with normally coiffed hair now greasy and limp. There was not a shadow of the effusive mischief she had witnessed a few times in their old coffee breaks. Angela felt a fresh wash of fear pass over her, setting her heart racing.

“No, no, no,” she murmured, taking her pulse again. Too fast. Faster than it had been a few moments earlier? “Stay with me, Moira...”

The break room door burst open again, this time letting in two nurses, an orderly, a doctor, and a rolling gurney. Angela took care to stand up slowly, supporting Moira so she didn’t fall over.

“Seizure, she’s unresponsive but breathing, it’s been maybe 3 minutes since I found her, looks like some sort of blood infection--” Angela found herself stammering. The nurses and orderly pushed past her, setting Moira down on the floor with a pillow. Her colleague was preparing a syringe of sedative. He glanced up at Angela, who had gone silent.

“It’s a good thing you came by today, huh?”

Angela watched them administer the treatment as Moira’s spasms gradually relaxed. They put her on the gurney and rolled her up to the medical wing.

* * *

Their best guess was some type of bloodborne infection. It made the most sense to move ahead with a high-intensity nanite treatment. Antibiotics would be a last resort, at least until they managed to culture whatever pathogen was in Moira’s blood.

Angela personally rolled the fresh tank from the supply refrigerator to Moira’s room. They drew her blood first before initiating her treatment. Angela watched the liquid pull out of her thin forearm—still reddish, but disturbingly dark, even for deoxygenated blood. The nurse took it up to the testing lab immediately, clearing the room for Angela’s work.

The doctor found herself going through the procedure that she had refined and practiced to memorization. She set the machine to its correct levels, installing the tank of golden nanites and watching the IV tubes trickle solution into Moira’s veins. The doctor stood with bated breath, somehow hoping that the infusion would immediately, miraculously eradicate the purple from her arm. Of course, it didn’t happen that quickly. Angela stood back. It at least appeared that Moira had stabilized. 

“Any clue at all about the infection source?”

The doctor on duty was standing at the foot of the bed. “We found a semi-healed laceration on her forearm,” he said, walking forward to show Angela. It appeared to be a fairly shallow slash high up her arm, scabbed over and at the focal point of the purple discoloration. 

The most peculiar part of her condition was that there was not any level of swelling in what would otherwise appear to be a severe infection. 

Angela frowned in confusion.

“Well, I’d better stay.” She pulled up the armchair in the room and settled in. “We have no idea what this infection really is, and I need to monitor her condition if the nanites aren’t working.”

“Are you sure? We have enough personnel to keep track of her—“

“Yes, Jaime,” Angela said firmly. “I don’t have anywhere else to be today.”

Her colleague nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Angela pulled her feet up onto her seat, gazing at Moira’s slumbering expression. The tempest of a geneticist was finally still. Maybe this was the first real sleep she had gotten in a while. 

Moira really did look much worse for the wear. The fatigue showed in the hollows of her cheeks and under her eyes, her already pale skin a sickly shallow tone. A pang of sorrow hit Angela. Had nobody looked out for her since they had fallen out? She could see the scientist tucked away in her lonely lair, burning the candle at both ends, unseen and unchecked. Prickly and solitary. _But also shunned._

The doctor rested her chin on the high armrest, pressing her lips together to stifle sudden tears. If she hadn’t been on the first floor, if Angela hadn’t come across her by complete chance? The thought of Moira fading alone in her lab, with nobody thinking of her at all…

Her eyes wandered back over to her upturned hand. Angela sighed in relief to see the purple starting to recede. The cut site was more apparent with the discoloration fading around it. She got to her feet, drawing closer to examine the limb. Her fingers grazed over the scab, following the dark veins down to her hands.

“What have you done now, Moira?” she mumbled.

“Accident.”

Angela whipped her head around at her voice, gravelly and soft. Tired blue and red eyes returned her gaze, and Angela felt her heart swell a bit to see them again.

“You should’ve gotten it checked.” Angela’s words came out a shade angrier than she had intended. “It could’ve gone so much worse.”

Moira smiled wryly. “Forgive me, doctor. It all progressed out of nowhere.”

She lifted her hand to look at it, and Angela realized that she had still been holding it in hers. Moira’s eyes were filled with that familiar curiosity again, looking at her palm and then the prominent veins along the back of her hand and forearm. 

“Does it hurt?”

“No...not at all.” She settled it on her chest, meeting Angela’s eyes again. “Hurt like a motherfucker when I cut myself at first, though.”

Angela felt her stomach flip at her words.

“You...you cut yourself?” she tried to keep her voice even, a terrible guilt settling like lead in her stomach. Moira waved her off.

“No, no. Like I said, accident. A flask on a hot plate exploded suddenly. A shard must have been contaminated when it injured me.” Moira heard the unease in her silence. “I’m being completely honest, Angela.” 

“Have you been alone?” she blurted in response.

“About as alone as I usually am.” Moira leaned her head back, staring up at the ceiling. Angela couldn’t read her expression, closed off and still.

“Are you okay?”

Angela was met with quiet. She took a shaky breath.

“Moira?”

“To be frank...I’ve been better.”

“I’m sorry,” Angela bowed her head, willing her voice to stop quivering.

“Don’t be,” she replied. She reached back down to her side, finding Angela’s hands still gathered and open on the bed. She squeezed them in the way she had a few times before, in her moments of matter-of-fact assurance. Strong, warm, if only in brief passing. “I’m not your responsibility.”

“No,” Angela took a deep breath. “But I could’ve been there for you. I should’ve.”

Moira brought Angela’s hand up to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to her skin in a way that made the doctor’s heart quicken immediately. “And here you are for me now.”

Angela didn’t know what to make of this show of tenderness. The bedridden woman lowered Angela’s hand back to the bed and released her. She could feel the spot where she had kissed her, where her warm breath had grazed over her skin, leaving goosebumps passing over Angela’s whole self. Her eyes were drawn to those lips, and she realized in vague panic that she wanted so badly to kiss Moira back. 

But what kind of bedside professionalism was that?

“It looks like the nanites are working very well.” She drew back, looking at the read outs on the circulator, hoping the flush in her cheeks wasn’t too apparent. “You seem...fairly lucid. You may be able to go home later tonight, after a period of observation.” 

“I feel completely lucid, doctor,” Moira responded, and Angela registered a gentle teasing in her voice.

“Good. Your prognosis looks very positive. I may return in a few hours to see if we can titrate you down from the nanite intensity and send you home.”

“Spare me from your doctor-voice, Angela,” she responded plaintively. “Have _mercy_.”

Angela jerked up from reviewing Moira’s clipboard, her cheeks heating again, this time in annoyance.

“Stop...” she glared at her. There was the familiar O’Deorain. The sparkle of irksome self-satisfaction. Especially at getting a rise out of her at times haughty counterpart. “How do you...”

“I may work underground, but I don’t live under a rock, Dr. Ziegler. The stories of your heroism are inescapable.”

“Well, I am quite tired of that topic of conversation, if I’m being honest,” Angela said. “Is there anything you need before I leave you for a couple hours?”

“No, doctor.”

Angela felt a warmth looking into those mismatched eyes again, in spite of herself. She had missed them, even while she had been too busy to realize. 

“Then I’ll be back to check on you in a couple hours. Do try to get some rest.”

She turned the lights down before stepping out of the room. She found herself standing aimlessly in the hospital hallway. _Might as well return to work while she was here._

She donned her white coat and pinned her tag on the pocket. Dr. Ziegler, back on call.

* * *

Moira ended up responding fairly positively to decreasing the therapeutics. By the late afternoon, the purple was eradicated from her veins. 

But when Angela eliminated the nanites from her system and returned in the late evening, the purple had begun to creep back up down her forearm. She quickly returned Moira to a half dosage.

“You’ll have to stay overnight, Moira.” Angela told her, to which her patient’s mouth twisted in displeasure. “The infection is more persistent than it looks.”

“I’ve slept all day and I feel wide awake. What am I supposed to do now?”

Angela shook her head. “I don’t know. Watch TV. Read magazines. Slow down for once.”

“Do you think you could pick up a couple readings from my lab?”

Angela couldn’t refuse her mournful request. Moira handed her the lab keycard, listing a couple volumes of recent journal publications that “should be on her desk somewhere”. 

Angela exchanged her white coat for her regular one and set off. She realized upon walking by the breakroom that she had left her umbrella where she had found Moira. She peeked in. It was still under the table where she had thrown it down. A now cold coffee and paper bag of muffin still waited, untouched, on the table. She retrieved all three. Angela had eaten cafeteria dinner only a couple hours ago, but she nibbled at the pastry anyways. _Blueberry._

She descended to B2 and opened the lab door. She flicked the lights on.

The lab was in a familiar tornado-ed state. She walked slowly down the hall, peering down the counters curiously. She stopped at Moira’s main workspace, briefly arrested in surprise.

A sleek prototype sat in the corner of the lab bench. It consisted of a nanite tank similar to those used in the clinic but smaller, plugged into a backpack shaped contraption with rigid, symmetrical tubing ending in two small metal badges, each centered with a flat nozzle. The system was empty, but a couple full tanks of nanite solution sat next to the contraption, almost luminescent on their own. It seemed even brighter than Angela’s own suspensions. When she reached for one of the vessels, the liquid frothed slightly at the disturbance. Angela quickly withdrew her hand. So this was why her experiment had gone so badly. _The geneticist couldn’t help but play with fire..._

There was no evidence of broken glass or a spill. Moira must have cleaned up before wandering upstairs. Angela stepped carefully past the counter, hurrying to find the requested literature in the messy pile.

She delivered the printed journals to Moira, who accepted them gratefully.

“I don’t know why you don’t just read them on your tablet,” Angela remarked. Moira cracked the first one open, squinting at the table of contents before flipping to her desired article.

“There is something to the analogue experience that isn’t present when you scroll through a computer file. Would you happen to have a pen on you?”

Angela unclipped the ballpoint from the clipboard at the foot of her bed. Moira pressed the button to lift the head of her bed, pulling her knees up to prop the book up in front of her. Angela handed her the pen. The patient looked suitably comfortable, immediately engrossed. After a wordless moment, Moira glanced up absently at Angela.

“Thank you.” 

Angela shook her head in mild amusement. “See you tomorrow, Moira.”

She switched on the reading light for her and turned the room lights down. The biomedical facility was quiet and the night was dark as she began her walk home. _Well._ Her day off ended up another late night. It seemed Dr. Ziegler couldn’t escape the pull of duty after all.


	8. Chapter 8

Moira O’Deorain was about as difficult of a patient as Dr. Ziegler could’ve expected.

She had grown increasingly restless after another day of being confined to the hospital bed. Having finished reviewing the articles of interest, she requested her computer to be brought up to her on which she ran data simulations for hours until her eyes grew tired. Angela found her in such state that evening, her head thrown back against the pillow, her good arm pressed over her eyes. Moira must have heard approaching footsteps as she let out a dramatic sigh. Angela couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Ms. O’Deorain? How are you feeling?”

She lifted her forearm to squint at her attending physician. Her expression brightened slightly at the sight of Angela. “That’s Dr. O’Deorain to you, Ms. Ziegler,”

“Let’s take a look at that abomination of an arm,” Angela responded, drawing closer. Moira thrust the said limb in her direction.

“Nothing to see. Perfectly fine.” She batted the saline IV line away from her face.

“It _has_ been a while…” Angela leaned back to grab the chart from the end of the bed.

“Six hours,” Moira supplied helpfully. “Six hours since you took me off the nanites, and zero sign of reoccurrence.”

Angela let the pages settle back on the clipboard, looking over at Moira with doctorly reproach. “And your condition?”

“I’ve told you, Angela. I feel perfectly fine. Better than fine. Being in this bed is likely worsening my state.” She swung her legs around to dangle them off the bed, except they were long enough to rest flat-footed on the floor. Her dark red socks tapped impatiently on the linoleum. Angela set the clipboard back on its hook and settled on the opposite edge of the bed.

Moira unhunched her back, stretching deeply and precariously tugging at the IV in the process. Angela reached to gently push the attached arm back to her side, at which Moira turned to look at her. Her piteous expression genuinely pulled at Angela’s (professional) heartstrings.

“All right.” Angela sighed. “Lay back down.”

“’All right’, as in you are discharging me?” she asked, not moving. Angela stood up again.

“Yes. Please lay down.”

Moira’s expression changed from doubt to appreciation as she realized the doctor was removing her monitoring cuff and IV. She placed a bandage on the entry point. The only one she had on hand was a purple, cat patterned children’s plaster. Moira examined it with mild curiosity as Angela cleared away the IV pole from the bedside and retrieved the clothes Moira had entered the hospital wearing. She placed the neatly folded garments on the bed next to Moira.

“Your shoes are just under the bed. Go on and get changed, and come out to the front. They’ll take care of the rest for you.”

Moira hopped to her feet, already looking rather sprightly.

“I need you to call the hospital if you show any signs of the infection returning, okay? Okay?” Angela stepped forward, waiting for her to meet her stern gaze.

“Yes, doctor.” Moira responded seriously, gathering her clothes in her arms and backing away to the bathroom in the corner of the room.

“The line is attended after hours as well. And if you need an ambulance, call it. Get rest, eat something when you get home.”

Moira had already retreated to the bathroom, waving her hand through the doorway. “Don’t fret!”

* * *

Angela’s hours resumed the next day. She was reminded of the futility of days off, as she simply returned to extra accumulated work.

Moira kept on her mind while she pipetted qPCR plates. She hadn’t heard about her that day, so it was likely that she was fine. _Should she visit her? Would she be at the lab today?_

She pressed the lid onto the 96 wells, getting up to load it into the machine when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She peeled a glove off her hand and took the device out. An unknown number. Angela answered.

“Hello?’

“Hello, doctor.”

Moira’s voice practically purred in Angela’s ear.

“Moira!” Angela set the samples down on the counter, leaning on a nearby wall. She ran her fingers through her bangs. “...How did you get this number?”

“Hospital desk gave it to me last night,” Moira said. “I thought I should let you know...the coloration returned slightly—"

Angela straightened up.

“Moira, go to the medbay, now. Are you in the building at the moment?”

“I’ve taken care of it. I’ve intravenously administered a sterile dilution of the nanite solutions I have been perfecting, and the purple has disappeared within the hour.”

Angela’s jaw dropped. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You...you injected yourself? With experimental suspensions?”

“I have been working on my regenerative solutions for months now, Angela. They worked perfectly.” Moira sounded very pleased with herself. Angela sighed deeply.

“You won’t return to the hospital, will you?”

“No.” Moira said shortly.

Angela considered her options, knowing her ideas were questionable. But Moira was unrelenting.

“If I provide you with dosages of my nanites, will you use those instead?” Angela negotiated. “Please? I need to know what you’re putting into yourself.”

“I suppose.”

“And do you really know how to administer IV solutions to yourself safely?”

“Yes, yes. I inject rabbits all the time, same process.”

Moira couldn’t hear Angela’s scowl over the phone.

“Are you in the building?” Angela asked again.

“Yes, in my lab.”

“Okay. I’ll come down at lunch with some vials. Call me again if it reoccurs. How many hours has it been since you injected yourself?”

“Over an hour. 70 minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in another hour.”

Angela hung up before Moira could say anything else to drive her blood pressure up.

* * *

Noon rolled around, and Angela filled four vaccine vials in a biosafety cabinet, carefully nestling them in ice in a leftover Styrofoam box. She tucked the delivery under her arm and headed down. She took an elevator to B2 and knocked on Moira’s door.

The door swung open to Moira with a very pleased expression on her face. She had won this little power play, and she knew it. Angela pushed past her into the room, rolling her eyes.

“Thank you, Angela.” She followed her to her workbench and peeked inside the box.

“You need to keep track of when you administer it. Write it down. How is your arm now?” Angela reached out a waiting hand. Moira’s eyes seemed to be challenging her as she rolled her shirtsleeve up and presented the limb.

It looked just fine. The original cut site was practically healed already.

“Good.” Angela ran her finger down one of her prominent (now normal, blue toned) veins. She suppressed a smirk when she felt the other woman’s arm shiver in response. Moira quickly withdrew her hand from Angela’s touch.

“So, what’s happened to our Tuesdays?” Moira sat herself down on her office chair, and Angela’s body automatically moved to pull up the lab stool. She let herself settle into it.

“I don’t know,” Angela played dumb, shrugging nonchalantly. “Have anything interesting to report?”

“I’m being dispatched on my first mission tomorrow.”

“What?”

Angela felt genuine surprise for the second time that day.

“I’m being dispatched on a Blackwatch mission.” Moira crossed her leg, leaning back against her chair. “Reyes is pleased with my progress. He wants an operative like your role for the covert ops missions.”

“Couldn’t they postpone? You were just discharged for an infection we don’t even understand the nature of…you aren’t even off treatments!”

Moira smiled and shook her head. “You cannot simply reschedule reconnaissance missions. Besides, like you said, I’m improving. The symptoms hadn’t returned for 18 hours this time.”

“We still don’t know how it could progress, Moira,” Angela insisted, still in disbelief. “Does Reyes know about what happened?”

“Oh sure. This whole ordeal is what convinced him that my tech is viable.”

A silence.

Angela clenched her jaw. “You did this on purpose.”

Moira shot her a deeply offended glare. “What? Of course not. He was just impressed that my suspensions were able to respond so effectively to the reoccurrence. He was here just before you came to visit.”

Angela didn’t know what to believe anymore. This woman was a headache unlike any she had ever contended with.

“Is…is any of this tested yet? Is it ready at all?”

Moira gestured at the cages of quiet, content rabbits in the next bay over. “Do those rabbits look well to you?”

“Beyond just animal trials. Moira, it’s only been maybe a few months, tops, that you’ve had this up and running.”

“Three weeks, actually.”

“Three weeks…!”

The doctor felt borderline apoplectic. She rested her head in her hands over the lab counter.

“Angela, I told you, I simply do not have the luxury of extensive human clinical trials like you do.” Moira fell back on her stoicism, something that Angela had always found disconcerting to witness. The outward version of Dr. O’Deorain. “And the success of the treatment on my own body appears to be compelling evidence of its efficacy in human systems.”

“You cannot take one trial as conclusive evidence—”

“I said, I have no choice!”

Moira’s voice had raised louder than Angela had heard before. The doctor shut her mouth, feeling the burn of mortification followed by resentment. Moira spoke again before she could respond.

“I remain under the auspices of Overwatch by a very, _very_ tenuous thread. Reyes is the only one who really recognizes and backs my work.” Angela felt the rebuff sting hard, but Moira didn’t seem to notice. “If I don’t deliver, he will not hesitate to leave me in the state I was before Blackwatch.”

“Moira…none of this feels safe.” Angela pleaded tersely. Moira seemed to collect herself already, her voice returning to its measured manner again.

“The science stands. I follow it because I trust my work.”

“It’s not always about your work,” Angela muttered through gritted teeth. “I’m concerned about _you_. _Your_ safety!”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.” Moira waved her concerns off again, which finally drew repressed angry tears to Angela’s eyes.

“I can’t…” she took a deep breath. “I can’t care for someone who won’t care for themselves.” Angela tried to find words that wouldn’t make her regret this later. “I need you to care about keeping yourself alive. Please, Moira.”

The geneticist sat still, her expression unreadable. Angela could’ve sworn that she almost looked dumbfounded, with that look in her eye that Angela knew meant she was gathering her thoughts again. So meticulous, yet so often dangerously irreverent. Angela braced herself for what she expected would be a scathing dismissal.

“I know that I can get preoccupied by the promises of my science quite frequently,” Moira finally spoke. “But I do strive to keep myself…functional. It is a difficult balance to strike, certainly, but you must believe that I do my best.”

Angela couldn’t bring herself to look up at her. She felt the inertia of her bones acutely and suddenly, that familiar sensation of entrapment that raised panic in her chest and choked her breath. Her surroundings were spinning away, the suffocation coiling around her and ripping the world from her senses. The usual memories seemed fuzzier, older, but the feelings were still recognizable. Incomprehension, terror, searching. _Always searching._

These awful moments seemed to have grown rarer as time had passed. She had wanted to believe that perhaps they had departed. Instead, it came after a long period of respite, with all the force of months accumulated. Angela felt like she was drowning, worse than it had been in years. This time she could see the face of the German child from the first week, could feel the way adrenaline had vibrated her bones until her hands shook, until she had to rely on the exosuit to keep from stumbling. It was all there again, fresh and reincarnated.

Angela didn’t realize Moira was next to her until she felt the echo of a firm hand on her shoulder. Angela got to her feet and threw her arms around her without a thought, stifling tearful gasps against the other woman’s chest, holding on for dear life. Moira froze in surprise before hugging her back, resting her chin on the top of her head.

“I can’t help,” Angela struggled out after a moment of trying to regain her breath. “I can’t keep track of all of…of--”

“All of them?” Moira’s voice was gentle, if not tinged with sarcasm. “When will you learn that not everything can be under your purview, my dear?”

She was only met by muffled sobs.

“There, there.” Moira stroked Angela’s hair, only half contained in an unkempt ponytail. “You mustn’t concern yourself with me, out of all of Overwatch’s bumbling operatives. You forget my acuity extends handily beyond laboratory applications.”

Angela thumped her back admonishingly. “Shut up...” she mumbled into Moira’s shirt.

This elicited a soft laugh, and Angela pressed herself into the vibrations in Moira’s chest, breathing in what it felt like to have her arms around her. Sensations of Moira, of touch and smell, of the sound of her voice and her heartbeat echoing against Angela’s cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. _Ground yourself, Angela._ She looked up at her and Moira, feeling her shift under her chin, released her from her arms.

Angela felt longing spark in her chest, louder than it had ever been. _My god, come back. Touch me again..._

But Moira only looked at her with a tentative, searching gaze.

“There was something that happened. Before.” Moira ventured matter-of-factly, another conclusion of her many observations. Angela only found the energy to shake her head.

“I don’t think I can speak on any of it right now.” Angela felt inside her body again, but she also felt the deep gravity of fatigue. “I am so...tired.”

“Of course.” Moira paused. “It may be advisable to take the rest of the day off.”

Angela rubbed her eyes. “You might be right.” She pulled out her phone. No missed calls or messages, and it was well past a reasonable end of her lunch break.

“Okay.”

Her eyes fell on Moira’s prototype on the counter, having almost forgotten the original subject of their conversation. Moira noticed.

“I promise you, I will return in one piece. Angela?” She waited until Angela met her gaze. “I will. You mustn’t let this worry you.”

Angela didn’t tell her that it simply wouldn’t be possible to do so.

“Okay,” she said again, shutting her eyes. She let her hair down, trying to relieve the headache that had been building. When she opened her eyes again, Moira had stepped back a couple paces, running her hand along the counter and delicately over the nanite delivery system.

“What time do you leave tomorrow?”

“Wheels up at 9 AM.”

“You should, um…” Angela took a deep breath, trying to break out of her frazzled daze. “…not forget those,” She nodded at the Styrofoam carrier. “Would you be able to administer it when you’re in the field?”

“I will take a preliminary dosage before the mission. And I’ll carry some on me.” Moira patted the lid. “You don’t anticipate any problems with administering the nanites prophylactically?”

Angela knew that Moira already knew the answer, but played along anyway. “Not at those doses.”

“Okay.” Moira moved Angela’s delivery from one end of the bench to the other. “I have a few fine-tuning adjustments to make before tomorrow,” she said awkwardly, and Angela picked up that she was trying to find a way to excuse her.

“Good luck, Moira.” Angela met her eyes, and Moira cracked a small smile. There seemed to be a glimmer of actual excitement in them. The geneticist looked more alive than she had in weeks.

“Thank you.”


	9. Chapter 9

Thursdays were always HQ meetings. The room was a few people shorter than usual, and the meeting was brief. Commander Morrison was normally concise, but he seemed particularly reserved that day. Captain Amari patted his shoulder as she stepped forward to remind her special ops team that they had their own meeting in a few minutes.

Angela sidled up toward Ana as most the room began to filter out.

“Where are Genji and Jesse?” she tried to sound as casual as possible. Ana looked up from her tablet, mildly surprised. Angela was usually in-and-out of such mandatory check-ins without much word to anyone.

“Blackwatch is on recon today,” she informed her. She snuck a glance at the rather dour-looking Commander, amusement in her eyes. “I don’t know if you can tell, but Jack and Gabriel had a bit of a lovers’ quarrel before they left.”

“Oh, definitely could.” Angela chuckled with the Captain. “Why, is it particularly risky?”

Ana turned her gaze back on Angela, and the doctor was quickly reminded of her relative rank in this section of Overwatch. She didn’t have any real business inquiring about such matters, and though Ana was not particularly hostile, the sternness of her demeanor was often quite intimidating.

“That’s the specialization of Blackwatch, is it not?” Ana set her tablet down on the conference room table, nodding at the assembled group in front of her. Angela stepped backward, realizing the room had mostly emptied.

“Right,” she responded politely. “Have a good day, Captain.”

“Thank you, Angela.”

* * *

The doctor had a busy clinic day. Those were the ones that occupied her best, when her mind was always managing multiple priorities at a time, interacting with colleagues and patients and their families, staying sharp and attentive. It was exhausting work, but the most rewarding part of her career. She managed to keep her mind off of Blackwatch’s assignment for most of the day, though a moment of peace as she checked on a sleeping patient’s nanite therapy gave her time to think (and fret).

Angela regretted not checking over Moira’s prototype before sending her away. She didn’t even really know how the propulsion system worked, and yet she had let the errant scientist go unleashed onto the field. “ _Acuity”_ , Moira had cited half-jokingly. _Yet so obtuse on other matters…_

She hated how her mind liked to wander first to Moira’s embrace, to things about her unrelated to the potentially perilous ongoing mission that Angela had greenlit. She was pretty sure denial was out of the question at this point, but she didn’t know where any of this could go, if it could go anywhere. And the ever-“perceptive” Moira…Angela had zero idea what went on in her head.

Truth be told, the doctor had always been “too busy”, if not by her career circumstances, then her own inclinations and poorly-managed attachment issues. University and postgraduate academia had brief affairs in which Angela alternated between ghosting and nervous doting. Most hadn’t ended well. Upon starting hospital work, she was inadvertently sucked out of any such worlds, romantically retired by her mid-twenties. Angela had a libido, but she also had her career.

(Emotionally? The situation was dire, but successfully repressed.)

And yet, this awfully arrogant geneticist arrived, and everything in Angela's conscience, her better judgment, and the scientific community screamed against this inevitable attraction to Dr. O’Deorain. She was deemed untrustworthy by the entire world, yet there wasn’t anyone else Angela felt more familiar with. Moira wasn’t dishonest. She was _too_ honest, provocatively so. Angela experienced this in the form of Moira's growing gentle affection for (just) her that was doubly intoxicating. She wanted Dr. O’Deorain completely: physically, romantically, and attentively.

She put her face in her hands and groaned audibly.

“Is it that bad, doc?”

Angela jumped out of her skin, having completely forgotten where she was. Her patient was smiling good-naturedly, and very much awake. “No, no, you’re doing just fine. Something else was on my mind. How are you feeling?”

* * *

The doctor realized during her break hour that she didn’t know when they were to return from the mission. Ana had made it sound like it was just for the day, but she couldn’t be sure. She drafted a text that she labored over with great indecision. In the end, all she sent Moira was, “Hope the assignment went well. Let me know when you are back safe, and we can check up on your condition again.”

Angela left a message for Genji as well, figuring he was most likely to respond (besides Moira). “Heard about your mission today. Best wishes, and don’t forget that we have a routine checkup tomorrow morning! Please let me know ASAP if there are any issues you’d like to bring up then. Sincerely, Angela.”

Did the doctor feel bad about the somewhat ulterior motives of her cheery business email? Perhaps.

It was early evening when her phone buzzed. Angela had finished her hospital shift thirty minutes prior and would normally have headed home, but she found herself instead flopped on her office couch, the blinds shuttered and door shut. The alert shook her out of her doze. Genji’s name blinked on her lockscreen, and Angela fumbled to open the message.

“Hello, Dr. Ziegler. We returned an hour ago, I apologize I could not get back to you earlier. I will see you tomorrow at 10 AM, I do not have any concerns to bring up with you. Thank you! Genji Shimada.”

Characteristically polite and practically unreadable in tone over text message. Angela checked for messages from Moira. Nothing.

Her stomach turned immediately. Had something gone wrong? Genji would’ve said something, wouldn’t he? Perhaps Moira was caught up in procedurals at the Swiss headquarters. Angela couldn’t expect her to be the most communicative, either.

She suppressed the urge to send a follow up message and tucked her phone away. She sighed. What was she doing, waiting around in the building like this? She eyed the pile of patient logs and a draft of her paper on her desk, but ultimately settled back into the couch and shut her eyes again. 

Angela blinked awake to the growling in her stomach, the golden light of late sunset peeking through her windows and rousing her from a deep nap. She checked the time again—it had been over an hour. Not a single message. Her stomach complained again, and she relented, shoving her feet into her shoes and shuffling toward the door. _Perhaps Moira was bent on making her worry herself sick,_ she thought, a shade more irritated than what was probably appropriate. She checked for her wallet in her pocket, musing about getting Indian for dinner.

She descended in the elevator, still blearily tired. The door opened at the first floor, and Angela immediately jolted awake.

Moira registered Angela in the lift but said nothing, stepping in next to her and turning to face the elevator doors. Angela let them shut, staring at the geneticist.

She was roughed up pretty badly. Dried blood marked her forehead, as did a scrape along her right cheekbone accompanied by a darkening bruise. She had her left glove off, holding what looked like a mildly sprained wrist. Angela noted her slight limp, though Moira stood tall as she always did, perhaps taller when she felt the doctor rake her clinical gaze over her.

“Moira—” Angela began, stepping towards her.

“I don’t want to hear it.” Her voice came out clipped and hoarse. She cleared her throat, refusing to meet the other woman’s eyes.

“Let me clean you up,” she responded gently, reaching a hand for Moira’s. She withdrew sharply, causing her own gasp of pain. There were plenty of first aid supplies on the dropships, Angela knew. Not to mention that Moira carried her own supply of nanites…

It was then that she realized the prototype on Moira’s back was utterly destroyed. The nanite tank was broken off and gone from the main system, the tubes along the shoulders cracked or entirely absent. Wires and cords drooped sadly from the blackened chassis. Angela could see the straps cutting into Moira’s shoulders, her minimal armor also compromised at where the prototype hung.

The door rattled open to B2 before Angela could say much else, and Moira strode quickly down the hall toward the lab door, disguising the pain in her right foot, but not well enough to evade the doctor’s attention. Angela jogged to keep up, slipping through the door before she could stop her.

“Moira, please. You’re in pain.”

Moira stopped at the end of the lab hall, breathing through gritted teeth as she extricated herself from the smashed biotic system and shoved it onto the counter. She turned around to face Angela, leaning heavily against the bench behind her. Her red and blue gaze met Angela’s defiantly.

“Will you just sit down?” Angela reprimanded her. Moira’s silence was unsettling. Angela watched her slowly sink to the floor against the bench. “Where is your first aid kit?” She walked the length of the lab. “Do you even have one?”

She eventually found the red and white box by the eyewash and brought it back to Moira. She considered going back up to fetch some actual supplies, but feared that she would return to an escaped Moira. She set the box down, scrubbing her hands in her usual routine before getting to work.

“A sprained ankle?” Angela didn’t wait for a response. She activated a cold pack and handed it to Moira, who wordlessly held it against her ankle.

Angela’s hands were deft and steady as she dabbed at the cuts with a wetted paper towel. The anxiety of the past twelve hours was mostly assuaged. Even if Moira was in poor condition.

“Well, you’re in one piece.” Angela tried at levity. The alcohol wipes made her patient wince, as did the antiseptic ointment.

The next few minutes were quiet, Angela working away diligently and gently, prompting little more than stifled gasps and affirmative grunts at _“How’s that?”_. Angela tried to meet her gaze a few times, but Moira’s eyes always flitted away quickly. Her expression was indecipherable.

She finished by binding her ankle firmly. Angela stood up to scrounge up a makeshift ice pack, taking a discreet second glance at the broken prototype. It looked like it had practically exploded.

She returned with the ice, taking Moira’s hand in hers to hold the cool compress against the swelling in her wrist. She let out a sigh of relief, pressing her head back against the drawers behind her. Angela settled down next to her patient, delicately tracing Moira’s upturned palm with her fingertips.

“What happened, Moira?”

Angela looked up at her face again, and felt her stomach drop a bit to see Moira’s eyes bright with tears, her cheeks red.

“Fucking hell…” she mumbled, turning away and covering her face with her other hand. Angela reached forward, pressing her palm against Moira’s cheek and drawing her face back toward her again. She didn’t resist, her eyes finally meeting Angela’s, her expression plaintive.

“Moira.”

“I’m done for.” She wiped roughly at her tears, disturbing the cuts on her face again.

* * *

Moira’s biotic system had been working—until it didn’t. Reyes had been caught in unexpected crossfire, taken a serious injury that she had leapt to heal in the heat of the battle. He recovered well—it was when a stray bullet struck the system that the nanites started to bubble, reacting in their tank. She hadn’t noticed until Genji shouted for her to throw the pack down and take cover. She disentangled herself just in time, and the team dove as the system blew, hot nanite solution fizzling high in the cold Russian air.

They were lucky the omnic outpost was isolated for the afternoon, lucky that Genji and McCree were crackshots that day and had dispatched the bots while covering them. Lucky that Genji had paid attention to the ticking bomb strapped to Moira O’Deorain’s back.

Commander Reyes reported all of this upon return to Swiss HQ to Morrison. Moira sat through the meeting in silence, Genji and McCree also seated at the table, listening to their leader fume. When Reyes got to properly blaming Moira, Jesse had spoken up for the first time.

“The altercation was bad luck. Dr. O’Deorain didn’t initiate the incident at all…”

Reyes still glared lividly at Moira. “Your waste of Blackwatch funds almost compromised our mission!”

The geneticist finally snapped, bolting to her feet. “The ‘waste of Blackwatch funds’ saved your goddamn life!”

“Dr. O’Deorain, you are dismissed!” Commander Morrison barked. “You too, Shimada. McCree, stay.”

Moira had stomped out of the room, out of HQ. She had found the next train to London, bought five individually bottled whiskey shots, and downed them on the way. It was a wonder she had made it to the Overwatch facility, the pain-numbing effect of alcohol fading as she had come across Angela by chance in the elevator.

* * *

“Jesse is reasonable,” Angela tried to assure her. “He will have your back. And I’ll talk to Morrison…if he knows I’m supporting and backing up your work, I’m sure—”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Moira laughed shortly. “You seem to forget that all of this is a secret. Your paper is in the final round of peer reviews. If Mercy got ejected from Overwatch…what would happen to Dr. Ziegler?”

Angela had no words.

“That’s right.” Moira said bitterly. “And so, it all ends. A decade of progress, abandoned.”

Angela felt a simultaneous swell of affection and exasperation in her chest. She shifted forward against Moira, who turned to regard her in surprise at their proximity.

“Don’t be so fucking melodramatic,” Angela muttered, and locked her lips against Moira’s.

She felt Moira shift stiffly under her, trying to right herself on her injured wrist, kissing her back immediately and desperately. Angela felt her heartbeat so loudly she feared Moira could hear it. The moments Angela had imagined and returned to in her mind were real now, and her skin thrilled at her touch again. Moira used her uninjured hand to push Angela’s hair away from their faces. She sighed at Moira’s touch glancing across her cheek to settle at the nape of her neck, pulling her closer.

She found herself straddling Moira’s lap, taking advantage of her slightly taller stature in this position to kiss her thoroughly, starting at her lips, kissing along her jaw and gently over her cheeks and forehead, pressing her lips against the unkempt shock of red hair. Moira wrapped her arms against Angela’s shoulder blades, burying her face in her neck. They stayed there, Angela running her fingers gently through her hair, resting her cheek on the top of her head, running her touch down Moira’s neck and smiling at Moira’s ticklish shivers.

“I think it’s an open secret that we work together by now, Moira,” Angela spoke after a comfortable silence. She smiled at feeling the rumble of Moira’s low chuckle.

“Perhaps.” She dropped her hands from hugging her, running her fingertips lightly down Angela’s sides, stopping to rest at her hips. Her thumbs played lightly with the hem of her shirt, and Angela flushed hot. “But I refuse to risk your work. Don’t talk to Morrison.”

“Science above all else, huh, Dr. O’Deorain?” Angela leaned back, admiring her striking eyes, basking in the warmth they directed at her.

“I will not harm your reputation, Angela,” Moira murmured seriously. “You’re on your way to great things.”

“Oh, shush,” Angela pecked her cheeks with quick kisses, eliciting a contented hum. "Let's get dinner."


	10. Chapter 10

Moira didn’t know what that washed-up cowboy had said to Morrison, but it seemed her position was safe. For now.

Though this had been a particularly brutal setback, O’Deorain knew what had to be done. Step back, take stock, investigate new questions. The disproval of one hypothesis raised three new ones. It had been a catastrophic malfunction—but there was also something curious to the spectacular reaction the biotics had undergone. Could this be manipulated to be of use?

She kept this on the back burner and focused on stabilizing the mechanisms to fulfill its intended use. She couldn’t predict when (or if) she would be deployed again, but she intended to give Blackwatch no more reasons to fire her. Her focus was so singular that Reyes’s new ultimatum caught her off guard.

Develop a new weapon. The upcoming operations require stealth and efficiency. They needed something untraceable, novel, unattributable to any groups or manufacturers or thinkers.

“You’re asking me? I’m a geneticist, not a weapons developer.”

“You’re off the grid, you’re capable, and you’re unconventional.” Reyes had delivered the assessments of her merit in his usual gruff mode. “I took you on for a reason. This is another chance to prove yourself, O’Deorain. Don’t make me regret it.”

Moira stopped him before he could storm out.

“Are you asking anybody else for this?”

Reyes seemed to be weighing the value of telling the truth or not.

“I’m the only resource you have.” Moira stated matter-of-factly. Reyes scowled, but couldn’t deny what she had estimated.

“We work in confidentiality, that includes within Overwatch.”

“Not by choice, it seems,” Moira scoffed.

Reyes ignored her jibe and left in a quiet huff.

* * *

Moira’s mind warmed up to this new challenge immediately. First of all, there had been that anomaly. The one that caused the terrible, fascinating purple mottling up her veins. The one that made her maintain intravenous dosages of nanites for five days following discharge from the hospital.

Moira had kept the remnants of the mystery solution immediately after the glass shatter, drawing up as much of it as she could and freezing it in a test tube.

The tube was still there when Moira returned to it over a week later, its contents untouched. The fluid had gone from the noxious purple when it was on the hot plate, to a colorless viscous fluid in the freezer. Upon leaving it to thaw, the fluid loosened and took on the eggplant hue. It was, frankly, beautiful. Thankfully, the sample was inert. Gentle mechanical disturbance did not incite any visual or temperature changes, as far as she could tell. It actually seemed more stable than the prototype nanite suspension it had been derived from.

Moira dove back into her notes from the day of the accident, attempting to reconstruct the circumstances that had resulted in the strange substance. It took a few rounds of trial and error, piecing together protocols from what poor documentation she had in her notebook and a memory of the day compromised by the subsequent onset of unconsciousness. This time, she worked from behind the glass of a biosafety cabinet and a thick pair of gloves. Eventually, she honed in on a procedure that stably produced the substance, minus the hazardous explosion. The most dangerous part was rushing the samples to the freezer, where the temperature drop seemed to further stabilize the suspension.

Moira’s mind wandered to questions further and further from acceptable domains. How could she be sure this was the same product as her initial mistake? Moira would examine the faded scar on her forearm, turning her dangerous ideas over in her head. An easy way to verify the similarity of the two substances would be to administer this new version to herself again…perhaps at a more dilute dosage, in a controlled environment with accessible safeguards. But she resisted these urges, at least for now.

For the time being, she tested the suspension on mouse models.

Unmitigated by nanite interventions, the substance appeared to gradually leach the life out of the mice. They began with convulsions (much as Moira had experienced) that ceased within minutes. This was followed by an initial period of what seemed like complete recovery. But within twelve hours, their condition began to deteriorate slowly. Despite this, it didn’t appear to induce serious or fatal illness. The mice hovered around a miserable existence until Moira put them out of their suffering, or saved them from the edge with a thorough infusion of nanites. She compared the effects of different dosages, but they all more or less resulted in the same end. Overall, a rather useless progression when it came to the search for a weapon effective for combat. 

In curiosity, Moira tried an external or topical administration. The poison induced significant external lesions, but that was it. The solution seemed to heat and bubble on contact, but the condition settled into non-lethal injury. This was a frustrating enigma, but the geneticist felt that there was something there. In a fanciful shot in the dark, she seriously considered utilizing the nanite delivery system. Before this could even be possible, however, she would have to rebuild the system from scratch. (Moira found this task the most dull and arduous. She was a geneticist, not a mechanical engineer.)

Moira toiled, finding herself dedicating more of each day to this venture. This direction of inquiry was alien to her. A geneticist by trade, even one with her knack for controversy, was a builder, an organic sculptor. Her intelligent design yielded the products intended—this ultimate act of creation was what had intoxicated O’Deorain when she discovered this field of science. 

But this was a new intention. She was honing the effectiveness of targeted destruction, the methodical deconstruction of life. The deliberate undoing of millennia of evolution aimed at maintaining survival. Here was an incomprehensible length of time and its progress at the feet of a singular master and her tools. This was a challenge few had ventured to explore, and Dr. Moira O’Deorain was unleashed on an untouched field with complete autonomy. Hidden from sight, but one day, her name would be known. Her science was undeniable.

* * *

Angela’s whimpers were always music to Moira’s ears. She hummed in satisfaction, wrapping her arms around soft thighs tensed in pleasure around her head. The delicious pull of Angela’s fingers in her hair drew her deeper, Moira tasting her with a greedy desperation as if she hadn’t been indulging in her body every evening for a week. She felt the intense magnetism of this woman as intensely as the first time she had touched her undressed, when she had properly unraveled the tension in Dr. Ziegler, in Mercy, and in the end found her Angela, untempered. She was beautiful, ethereal, in the flush of her cheeks and the exhausted heave of her breath in her chest, the plain desire in her gaze and her whispers and cries of pleasure. Moira found her heart quicken in those moments of admiration. It felt simultaneously illicit, but right.

Her angel surprised her frequently. She had sides to her that maybe even Angela hadn’t known of. Some days she was shy or coy, waiting for her lover to recognize her need. Other days she was insatiable, coming down unannounced and pushing Moira up against the nearest surface with bruising kisses. One such day, they had fucked on Moira’s desk. Moira was glad she was in the second-floor basement, and prayed that Reyes wasn’t going to make an impromptu visit. Her lover was vocal, to say in the least. And when Angela was satisfied, she returned Moira’s favor. This was something the latter woman was rather unaccustomed to in her liaisons, but Angela was skilled and attentive. Their sex was divine and unadulterated and addictive. 

This particular evening’s event involved Moira making her lover come on her tongue again for the umpteenth time that week. They were on Angela’s queen bed, lights turned low and sheets half shoved to the floor in their frenzy. 

Moira loved feeling Angela’s pussy tense against her as her orgasm took hold, when her desperate moans lowered into deeper expressions of absolute satisfaction and then to winded panting, the slackening of her body that just previously had been taken by the electricity of pleasure.

Moira liked to mess with her on occasion, delving back in and sucking lightly on her overstimulated clit. This usually elicited a loud expression of surprise and delicious pain.

“Moira—!” Angela’s hold in her hair tightened, and Moira grinned, releasing her with a soft _pop_. The subject of her attentions shuddered.

“I never tire of watching you feel me,” Moira murmured into Angela’s ear as she crawled back up to lie next to her. Angela responded by wrapping her arms around her and kissing her deeply, tasting herself on Moira’s lips.

Moira admired her in the light of low lamplight as she drew back from their kiss. Her eyes shone, wide black pupils set against sky blue irises, her eyelids heavy with the onset of post-sex sleepiness. She licked her lips as if to take in every last trace of Moira. Her eyes met Moira's gaze and lowered shyly. Moira smiled, pushing Angela’s pale hair back from her face and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead.

 _What were they, exactly?_ Moira asked herself the cliché frequently. The uncomplicated, most prudent answer (next to not being entangled at all) was that it was just a sexual affair, the satiation of a desire that both busy, lonely women had let go unattended for a very long time. But in such moments of tenderness Moira knew there was something unsaid. Despite this, she couldn’t bring herself to worry much about it.

And Angela herself? As far as Moira could ascertain, she was completely present. She was so forthright in her desire and pleasure, her defenses discarded. Moira knew Angela’s spell was binding when the look in her eyes compelled the geneticist full attention, regardless of what usually captured her hyper focus. Angela was the sweet, flitting moment of warmth in Moira’s otherwise solitary days. Moira chased moments with her, and savored each one they could manage.

“How are you?” Angela murmured in their embrace. Moira laughed.

“A bit late into the date for small talk, don’t you think?”

“Forgive me for getting ahead of myself,” she replied dryly. “I simply could _not_ resist.” She gave Moira a brief kiss. “I did mean it, though.”

“I am making progress. It’s surprisingly easy to return to Commander Reyes’s good graces…especially when he is reminded that he is about as dependent on the arrangement as I am.” She smirked to herself. Angela shook her head.

“That is all well and good, but I was asking about _you_ , Liebling,” she chastised gently.

“You already know everything there is to know,” Moira responded simply, giving Angela pause. She pressed herself closer against the taller woman.

“Won’t you show me what you’ve been up to sometime?” she finally asked against Moira’s chest.

Moira was quiet this time, long enough to cause her lover to lean back and look at her. The geneticist mustered an appeasing smile, hoping the awful onset of unease wasn’t evident in her expression.

“Of course.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for taking so flippin long to update!! thanks for sticking around :)

Moira’s investigations into the curious properties of the inverse-nanites (she hadn’t come up with a suitable name as of yet) proved particularly useful for the refinement of her healing system. Though it significantly compromised the raw power and efficiency of the biotics, the tweaked suspension and its aerosolized form was stable and safe.

(Almost boringly so.)

The particulate delivery system had been effective with the first iteration of nanobiotics, but the system struggled with the second batch’s dulled effectiveness. _The balance of safety and power…_ Moira was no stranger to such abstract dilemmas, she noted bitterly.

There was also a remodel of the system chassis and tubing structure in an effort to increase durability. Angela had found the choice in mechanism quite interesting. A palm-mounted nozzle, whose intensity of release Moira could modulate by the tension in her outstretched fingers. Angela assisted her with molding the template for the hand-panel.

“Which hand do you prefer?”

“I’m ambidextrous.”

Angela smiled back, prepping the putty in her hands. “I remember, yes.”

“I do tend to prefer my right,” Moira conceded. Angela took her outstretched hand and kissed her palm lightly. Moira blushed in spite of herself.

“I’m awfully proud of you, you know.” Angela held the warmed molding putty against Moira’s hand, resting her own free hand on Moira’s cheek and turning the taller woman’s abashed expression towards her. Moira shut her eyes against her touch.

Angela leaned up on her tiptoes, kissing her briefly and leaving Moira leaning into thin air, her eyes squeezed shut goofily. Angela giggled, returning her attention to the task at hand. She carefully lifted the imprinted putty away.

“Who’s doing the materials casting and assembly for you?” she asked curiously, watching Moira set the mold away to set properly.

“Oh…just a few old colleagues and classmates from university.” Moira brushed it off with what she hoped was a satisfactory answer. Luckily, it seemed Angela had other things on her mind, as when the geneticist turned back around she found she was trapped against the counter, Angela’s arms wrapping around her waist. Moira let her eyes shut as she leaned down for a longer kiss. Angela hummed in satisfaction against her lips.

“Are we done for the night, Dr. O’Deorain?” she murmured, and Moira _mhm_ ’d in response. Angela stepped back, smiling radiantly as she took her hand and hurried them out of the lab, back to the warmth of their usual evening retreat in Angela’s apartment.

* * *

Moira had told the truth. She was collaborating with a couple old acquaintances, one of which was an electrical engineer working at the recently established Oasis Collective.

“Moira, this is brilliant work,” Dr. Janus Smit had noted. “You know…Oasis has been scouting for minds in molecular biology lately. I could put in a good word or two.”

It was a tempting offer. Extremely tempting. But she had...too much invested here. It appeared her plan was going to come to fruition soon enough. _Patience, O’Deorain_. Janus took the silence as a show of uncertainty.

“The way Overwatch works…their constraints are simply disrespectful. Oasis, on the other hand…Well. They wouldn’t keep you in a cellar.”

Moira leaned back in her chair and glanced around the now-familiar lab space.

“I don’t know…this institution is growing on me.”

Her colleague shook their head in amused disbelief.

“Thank you for your assistance, Janus.” Moira sat up, uncrossing her legs. “I’ll send you the test results by Friday.”

“Sure. And the offer still stands.”

Moira smiled politely, reaching to hang up the video call. “I will certainly keep it in mind.”

* * *

Her next breakthrough was monumental. Moira couldn’t believe it actually worked.

Creating a continuous circuit of both forms of nanites, she was able to harness the energy the anti-nanobiotics sapped to elevate the energy of the healing biotics. The system was unwieldy…but by some miracle, it worked. The propellant system only required a couple tweaks to accommodate both suspensions, and by the end of a late evening, she had a working model.

Moira put away her precious discoveries and locked up the lab. She checked her watch. Half past eight, one of the latest evenings she’d had in a while. Being around Angela regimented actual regular mealtimes for perhaps the first time in her life. But today had been a deployment mission for the combat medic. Moira took advantage of this and focused her whole day on her secret project.

The geneticist burned with impatience, wishing again that she could regale Angela with the details of her discovery, her absolute genius, the implications of what she had squirreled away in her lab. Moira was accustomed to being isolated—she was not quite a social butterfly in her past. But at least there had been a few peers that listened with fascination and respect. The same cowards that stood back in silence when Moira’s work finally published…when the public recoiled at what everyone in her field had always thought and known, but refused to speak aloud. Moira scowled, shoving open the facility’s front door and stepping out into the cool night air. The fate of a martyr was debasing, she had come to discover.

Moira realized a few paces down the street that her feet were taking her towards Angela Ziegler’s abode. She stopped, pulling her phone out of her pocket. No messages from Angela, but she sent one anyways. _Back?_

Moira leaned against the exterior of the Overwatch building, hopeful uncertainty making her wait for a few minutes on the dim sidewalk. She was about to give up and take the Tube home when a message buzzed in her hand.

_yes_

Moira waited for another message, but nothing came, so she tried again.

_Have you eaten?_

_No._

Moira shook her head, turning on her heel and continuing down the direction she had taken. _I’ll bring dinner._

_I have dinner. come over_

* * *

Angela opened her door, looking like death. This time, it was Moira’s turn to be taken aback.

There weren’t any significant injuries visible, just a general sheen on her brow and a limp. Her face was drained of color, her eyes dulled. Angela stood back to let her guest in and lurched heavily toward the kitchen. _At least she had gotten changed,_ Moira noted. Angela looked drowned in a large T-shirt, likely a free perk from a convention, emblazoned with some biotechnology supplier’s logo. Moira sat and watched as she reached up for two matching mugs and set the kettle to boil.

“How are you?”

Angela took a deep breath. “I’ve been better.”

She reached into a cabinet, retrieving teabags. She reached into another and took out a bottle of fine brandy. Moira watched in quiet incredulity as Angela generously spiked her own mug. She sidled up to the dining chair next to Moira’s and slid her the non-alcoholic tea.

“Is this a routine for you?”

Angela took a deep sip, her heavy eyelids closing momentarily. She looked feeble, her knees drawn up under her on the chair in a manner that reduced her silhouette to just the oversized shirt.

“This work destroys you,” Moira said, a shade more accusatory than she intended. Angela chuckled dryly.

“I don’t know if it saves me or destroys me.” She wrapped her slender fingers around the warmth of the mug, and Moira watched her fidget on the handle.

“You don’t have to do any of this. You could leave Overwatch. They need you more than you need them.”

Angela raised her cup to her lips again, her eyes meeting Moira’s through the steam. The corner of her mouth twitched in derisive amusement. “You’re wrong on that count.”

Moira didn’t say anything, so Angela continued.

“It’s some kind of fucked up therapy,” she looked at the tea, then looked past it, eyes focused on nothing in particular. “For the first time in my life…I get to decide. I get to decide who lives, and who dies.” Her lips twisted into a bitter grimace. “Well. Until I don’t.”

“Mere angels don’t decide fate.”

Angela smiled at Moira’s usual poeticism.

“I grew up powerless. So I grew up to do this work.” She spoke evenly, as if she had rehearsed this speech before. _She probably had. Alone, to herself._ “And here I am, short of everything I wanted. I’m still enabling violence, and apparently I can’t save everybody anyways.” Her knuckles whitened on her cup. “Talk about compromising values.”

“Angela. You save lives.”

“I can’t escape it,” she mumbled, unhearing. She took a deep breath, and a deeper gulp of scalding tea. Her eyes only half-focused on Moira, dazed. “All I’ve known and been is war. And I can’t fucking quit it.”

“Angela,” Moira said again, this time more firmly. “You aren’t your experiences.” _Your traumas._ She paused for just a fraction of a second, her mind trying to weigh out what she should say, if she should say any of what was on her mind at all. She discarded half of her concerns. “I’ve seen you as you are. You’re much more. You’re Angela.”

She had her attention, but Angela didn’t look particularly convinced. She quietened, and Moira cringed inwardly. She hadn’t intended to shut her up. 

“What’s dinner?”

“I prepped pasta before today’s work,” Angela replied, leaning her elbow on the tabletop. “I’ll need to reheat it, I’m sorry. It’s probably not very good after the microwave…”

Moira was already on her feet. “No matter, I’ll take care of it.” She found the large tupperware in the well-organized fridge and set it in the microwave for a couple minutes. She turned back around to look at Angela leaned over the table. 

Moira was at a loss. Initiating gestures beyond a casual touch was not a strong suit for her. She knew that Angela seemed to find physical comfort soothing, but she was normally the one that reached for Moira first. It was her stoic dullness that was particularly unnerving to see.

They ate in silence. Angela turned to Moira suddenly, her eyes clear.

“Will you stay tonight?”

Moira didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

* * *

The longer Moira O’Deorain remained, the longer she could feel herself fatally rooted, slowly pulling apart at the seams. The extremes of who she thought she was tugged and flourished, and Moira didn’t know which side she belonged to. There was Blackwatch, her life’s work, the entire world and future before her; and there was Angela.

Moira O’Deorain was not dishonest. She was not cruel. This was what she told herself. Whatever she saw in Angela’s eyes, whatever joy or gentle laughter she managed to elicit from her, Moira wasn’t one to break that. 

So Moira endured, she protected. She did for Angela what she did for others and never received back. Was this what it was supposed to be like? Was it supposed to make Moira careless, to relish in it? The fear of what was to come made her hold Angela closer, made her answer honestly the first time Angela had looked into Moira’s eyes with terrifying certainty and said she loved her. Because what else could all of this be? _I love you, Angela Ziegler,_ she would tell her, and watched her eyes brighten, her cheeks rosen. She was beautiful. 

It broke Moira every time. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i'm so sorry i've been MIA. school is kicking my ass. but hey here's another chapter for ya. i promise i'm not giving up on this fic!
> 
> i hesitated in writing a chapter containing passages from both angela's and moira's points of view, but i felt it wouldn't be too disorienting and that putting two very short chapters in one (still short lol) chapter made more sense.

Moira’s ambitions developed a thirst that proved undeniable. Her mind seized upon the next ill-advised idea immediately and would not cease.

She made the snap decision one banal afternoon in her lab. The samples had been whittled down in intensity and dosage to the point where there was little effect at all on the rabbits. In a moment of bored curiosity, Moira pushed a fresh syringe of dilute, stable antinanite into the same arm that had first contracted the “infection”. 

The coloration returned, as striking as it had been the first time. So did the initial pain. It burned like fire, a coursing spark she could feel rush to her fingertips and back up her arm, fizzling under her skin and deep in her bones. She sat down shakily; each movement sending a new pulse of heat, alternated by a wave of coolness that ran from the injection site to the tips of her fingers. The sensations calmed within the minute, to a manageable warmth in her muscles. Moira’s heart raced, not out of the nanite’s effects but of the adrenaline of discovery.

Her next step was donning the rebuilt nanite system. The system switched on, and Moira could’ve sworn she could feel her right arm tingle against the tubes filling with the purple antinanites.

She tested the biotic life drain as she normally had—upon a laboratory mouse. The lifesteal hit her own system at the same time as her engineered one. She felt the energy zip through her whole body—electrifying her like a suspended wire. Moira let out a giddy, disbelieving laugh. She discharged the healing nanites—the electricity seemed to flow through her, out of her, this time, returning her to her resting state. She was otherwise unscathed.

Moira stood still in the center of the floor, staring incredulously at her own hands, balanced toward the balls of her feet with the dual energy of thrill and nanites coursing through her veins. She had never felt this alive in her life. She felt like she could’ve risen into the sky.

Moira got to work refining the system. She set a careful control and limit to the lifesteal mechanism and learned to recognize the sensations associated with the boundaries of operation. She became a finely tuned instrument of the system, a control integrated into the heart of her own creation. The culmination of her toil, embodied. Proof of the success that nobody but O’Deorain had dared to touch. 

Vindication could not begin to describe the scientist’s glee.

Would Angela be proud, in awe? Moira was used to operating in secrecy, without immediate attention or accolades. But the longer this carried on, the more she could feel the looming threat of consequences wrap tighter around her. _After the first field mission proving its merit,_ Moira vowed. _Then she’ll understand it all._

Sometimes this unease stirred in Moira upon seeing her angel, manifesting in a frustration that she knew was misguided. It wasn’t Angela’s fault that these were the circumstances. It wasn’t her fault that she was so resolute, so obsessively, conscientiously _good_. So trusting.

Moira’s darling was so pliable in her hands, so breathlessly responsive when Moira’s frustration bubbled into a desire that pinned the smaller woman down, ravished her or barely touched her, ordered her to open those wide blue doe-eyes and look into Moira’s. Her pupils were always blown wide, obediently attentive and dazed at the same time. Moira’s darling, her angel. Her _good girl._

Angela Ziegler was a good, needy lover. And Moira gave, and took, and gave again.

* * *

Moira grew accustomed to infusing long-acting healing nanobiotics every few days. It kept the coloration at bay. The first couple times, she started with an injection of antinanites to maintain their presence in her system, but by the third cycle of reset, the purple returned in the same strength they had first occurred. 45 milliliters of long acting nanites worked for approximately 72 hours.

One day, Moira had been careless. In a moment of overconfidence, she had propped her door open to air out the lab, believing Angela would be in the middle of her busy clinic shift. She had only begun to plunge the solution into her veins when she heard a knock and footsteps into her lab. “ _Fuck,_ ” Moira cursed, shoving the needle away and rolling her sleeve down. But it wasn’t Dr. Ziegler. Gabriel Reyes peered over at the geneticist’s workspace curiously.

“Shooting up?” he said. Moira scowled, replacing the sleeve of her right arm.

“Why would I ever compromise my body like that?”

“Hey, no judgement here,” Reyes said, raising his hands noncommittally. Moira narrowed her eyes. The commander hadn’t talked to her since shortly after the failed mission weeks ago.

“What do you need, Gabriel?” she turned back to her bench, carefully capping the syringe for disposal. She could feel his gaze rake over her and her cluttered workspace.

“I’m here with a second chance.” He set a thin manila folder in front of her, and she opened it. The face of a burly, bearded man, sharply dressed in a suit, stared back at her. _Antonio Bartalotti,_ the profile read. 

“It seems you’re making some progress.” He nodded at her precious project, carefully hung on its custom wall mount. Moira couldn’t help her smug grin.

“You have no idea,” she murmured, and rolled her sleeve up. Reyes’s eyes lit upon the veins in her arm, still taking their time to recede from its violent purple tone. Moira preened at the look of utter disbelief on the Blackwatch commander’s face.

“What have you done to yourself…?” he managed gruffly. Moira shrugged in what she hoped was a blasé manner.

“Dedicated myself to the science.” She met his eyes, her gaze challenging and bright. “This opportunity you speak of?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there has been an...incident in Oslo.” Reyes rubbed his eyes tiredly. The mention stirred a vague memory of Moira’s, hearing Angela briefly explain where she was off to for the previous week. Moira had been too caught up in her reading to retain much else, looking up only to press a farewell kiss to her partner’s cheek. She _had_ seemed pretty distressed...but with Dr. Ziegler, distress was not at the forefront of her expressive priority. She had returned tired and withdrawn, which Moira had grown to recognize meant a rough deployment. In those occasions, it was best to draw Angela a bath and not ask questions.

“This man is connected to the destruction of an Overwatch facility there. Mccree and I are leaving tonight to meet Lacroix in Rome, and I anticipate there will be a Blackwatch operation soon after.” Reyes continued, snapping Moira out of her memory. “This is a serious operation. We cannot have deadweight. The more utility you can contribute, the better.”

Moira scoffed.

“You made the correct choice in the beginning.” She shut the folder and slid it back towards Reyes. “You will find my abilities far from deadweight.”

Reyes didn’t pick up the folder. He looked at her quizzically, pushing it back across the counter. “Keep it. Do some of your research.” He stepped back. “I’ll be in contact shortly once we have the full briefing from Gérard.”

Moira watched his receding back, his strides fast and steady.

“O’Deorain, don’t fail me again,” Gabriel called, turning the corner before she could shout any sort of response.

 _Wonderful,_ Moira checked on her arm again, her mind already gone amidst new racing thoughts. _Exactly what she needed._

* * *

Oslo was the worst that Mercy had seen in a long time. 

Running point on a search and rescue was a role she was unaccustomed to. She felt helplessly torn between a hundred broken bodies, struggling to find it in her to delegate the care of every patient. There were too many to save here. 

When the administrative flurry died down, her break was by the side of the most dire case in the makeshift field clinic, doing what she knew best, using her hands and their expertise. The patient didn’t make it. 

Angela had to step out to catch her breath, gasping crisp Oslo air in her body’s desperation to eliminate the sickly death-tent miasma. 

She could still feel its burning stench in her lungs when she arrived home, when Moira had drawn the bath after Angela’s usual brisk shower to scrub off whatever detritus of disease still clung to her. Moira lit the usual candles, and the sweet pungency of the wax and its flame made Angela’s stomach turn. “Put it out,” she had murmured, and Moira looked at her quietly, shutting the lid to snuff the flame. She left Angela alone, as she always did for her. It was rare for her to cry during these baths, but Angela found herself wracked with silent tears.

The next event, too soon after the last, was Rome’s catastrophe. This time there had luckily been much fewer personnel in the building. Mccree and Reyes were unharmed, and had been there to rescue what people initially survived the blast. Dr. Ziegler was assigned to a severely injured Senior Agent Gérard Lacroix.

This time, nanobiotics proved enough to bring the man back from the brink. Angela breathed a sigh of relief. A life saved.

She explained what she could to Lacroix’s wife, a graceful waif of a French woman, an unmoving presence in the armchair next to her husband’s bed. Speaking to loved ones was always the hardest part of the job, but Angela smiled at the shy woman’s relief and the sudden, furtive embrace she gave the doctor. Gérard Lacroix was going to be just fine.

Overwatch, however? Angela felt a deep unease in the pit of her stomach. Things were accelerating in magnitude. She was rarely one to trust immaterial intuitions, but something was coming.

She didn’t dwell upon these thoughts for too long, however. What could the doctor do but carry on?


End file.
